All foreign parallels, however, are apt to be misleading, but Irishmen have only to remember the fact that the secession of Grattan and his followers from the Irish Parliament in 1797 paved the way for the passing of the Act of Union to find in it a warning against what is the main plank in the platform of Sinn Fein—­“the policy of withdrawal”—­which, moreover, would leave the control of Irish legislation to the tender mercies of such Irish members as Mr. Walter Long and Mr. William Moore, which would further involve the condemnation of the policy pursued by every Irish leader since the Union, and would mean the abandonment of the weapon by which every Irish reform has been wrested from English prejudice—­namely, an independent party in the House of Commons, backed up by a vigorous organisation in Ireland.

For the rest, those who have read the high-flown manifestoes of the Sinn Fein party will be concerned to look around for the result of the proposal which they have been preaching for the last three years, and if they find nothing but a ridiculous mouse in the matter of achievement will be inclined to declare that not a mountain but a molehill has been in labour.  It is a singular fact that although since the general election there have been no less than ten by-elections in Ireland, of which only two were in “safe” Unionist seats, in no single instance have the advocates of the policy of abstention from attendance from Westminster had the courage to go to the polls with a candidate of their own.  We are told by the exponents of the new policy that they are sweeping the country before them, but the only certain data which Irishmen have as to its popularity is that in ten per cent. of the constituencies in the country, the only ones to which any test has been applied, in no instance has Sinn Fein dared to show its face at the hustings.

Two Irish members, it is true, resigned uncompromisingly from the Irish Party and joined the new organisation in disgust at the scope of the Irish Council Bill.  Sir Thomas Esmonde, who expressed his intention of resigning, was, with what it must have come to regret as indecent haste, elected a member of the Sinn Fein organisation, but within a few weeks declared his willingness “to act with the Parliamentary Party, or any other set of men who put the National question in the forefront,” and went on to express his opinion that the chances of a Sinn Fein candidate in his constituency of North Wexford would be nil.

So far at any rate Sinn Feiners must admit that “beacoup de bruit, pen de fruit” sums up their action in regard to Irish affairs.  Any success in propagandism which they may have achieved is to be traced to a natural impatience, especially among dilletante politicians, whose experience is purely academic, at the slowness of the Parliamentary machine in effecting reforms, but any force which it possesses is discounted by the fact that men whose views are extreme in youth