in consequence been resorted to.  Eviction, whether carried out in West Ireland or East London, is a very ugly necessity, and one, too, that is indelibly stamped with a taint of inhumanity.  At the last extremity, it is, however, the only one open to any owner, qua owner, let his political sympathies or proclivities be what they may, so that it does not necessarily argue any double portion of original sin even on the part of that well-laden pack-horse of politics—­the Irish landlord—­to say that his wits have not so far been equal to the task of dispensing with it.

Within the last two years only one question has risen to the surface of politics which gravely affects the destinies of Ireland, but that one is of so vast and all-important a character that it cannot be evaded.  The question I mean, of course, of Home Rule.  Complicated as its issues are, embittered as the controversy it has awakened, dark still as are its destinies, its history as a piece of projected, and so far unsuccessful, legislation has at least the merit of being short and easily stated.  In the month of December, 1885, just after the close of the general election, it began to be rumoured as forming part of the coming programme of the Liberal leader.  On April 8, 1886, a Bill embodying it was brought forward in the House of Commons by Mr. Gladstone; upon June 7th, it was rejected upon the second reading by a majority of thirty, and at the general election which followed was condemned by a large majority of the constituencies.

And afterwards?  What follows?  What is its future destined to be?  Will it vanish away, will it pass into new phases, or will some form of it eventually receive the sanction of the nation?  These are Sphinx questions, which one may be excused from endeavouring to answer, seeing that the strongest and most far-reaching heads are at this moment intent upon them—­not, so far as can be seen, with any strikingly successful result.  The Future is a deep mine, and we have not yet struck even a spade into it.

In every controversy, no matter how fierce the waves, how thick the air with contending assertions, there is almost always, however, some fact, or some few facts, which seem to rise like rocks out of the turmoil, and obstinately refuse to be washed or whittled away.  The chief of these, in this case, is the geographical position, or rather juxtaposition, of the two islands.  Set before a stranger to the whole Irish problem—­if so favoured an individual exists upon the habitable globe—­a map of the British islands, and ask him whether it seems to him inevitable that they should remain for ever united, and we can scarcely doubt that his reply would be in the affirmative.  This being so, we have at least it will be said one fact, one sea-rock high above the reach of waves or spray.  But Irishmen have been declared by a great and certainly not an unfavourable critic—­Mr. Matthew Arnold—­to be “eternal rebels against the despotism of fact.”  If this