“It is scarcely possible to over-estimate the danger that would arise if the vast moral legislative, and even administrative powers which every separate legislature must necessarily possess, were exercised in any near and vital part of the British Empire, by men who were disloyal to its interests.  To place the government of a country by a voluntary and deliberate act in the hands of dishonest and disloyal men, is perhaps the greatest crime that a public man can commit:  a crime which, in proportion to the strength and soundness of national morality, must consign those who are guilty of it to undying infamy.”

If English people are so blind that they cannot perceive this, foreigners, whose vision is clearer, have warned them.  Bismarck said that England, by granting Home Rule to Ireland, would dig its own grave; and Admiral Mahan has recently written:—­

“It is impossible for a military man or a statesman to look at the map and not perceive that the ambition of the Irish separatists, if realised, would be even more threatening to the national life of Great Britain than the secession of the South was to the American Union.

“The legislative supremacy of the British Parliament against the assertion of which the American Colonists revolted and which to-day would be found intolerable in Canada and Australia cannot be yielded in the case of an island, where independent action might very well be attended with fatal consequences to its partner.  The instrument for such action, in the shape of an independent Parliament, could not be safely trusted even to avowed friends.”

So then, having reviewed the evidence as calmly and dispassionately as I can, I answer the two questions which I propounded at the outset of the enquiry—­That the real objects of the Nationalists are the total separation of Ireland from England and the establishment of an Independent Republic; and that the men of Ulster in resisting them to the uttermost are not merely justified on the ground of self-preservation, but are in reality fighting for the cause of the Empire.

NOTE.

The following Report of the Annual Pilgrimage in memory of Wolfe Tone, which took place on the 22nd of June last, and the article in the Leinster Leader (a prominent Nationalist journal) will show how closely the Nationalists of to-day follow in the footsteps of Wolfe Tone.

THE MEMORY OF WOLFE TONE.

ANNUAL PILGRIMAGE TO BODENSTOWN.

(From our Reporter.)

On Sunday last the annual pilgrimage to the grave of Theobald Wolfe Tone took place to Bodenstown churchyard.  This year the numbers who attended exceeded those of last year, about a thousand coming from Dublin and another contingent from Tullamore, Clare, and Athlone.  The procession formed outside Sallins station was a most imposing one, being made up of St. James’ Brass Band and the Lorcan O’Toole Pipers’ Band and the Athlone Pipers’ Band, the National Boy Scouts, the Daughters of Erin, and members of the Wolfe Tone Memorial Clubs.