I ask, to what does England look forward in a prolongation of the present conditions?  There is no finality in the politics of Ireland any more than in those of other countries.  She cannot say to Ireland—­“Thus far shalt thou go, and no further.”  As one burning question is solved another arises to take its place and to demand redress.  The battle for the moment may seem to be to the strong, but in the long run might is unable to resist the advances of right.  Time, we may well declare, is on our side; but one has to count the cost in the material damage to us, and in the moral damage to Great Britain, in the ultimate concession, perhaps under duress, of so much which has repeatedly been refused.  Ever since, in 1881, Mr. Gladstone “banished to Saturn the laws of political economy,” strong measures of State socialism have been enacted by both parties.  It is not for nothing that the tenants in the West find themselves to-day paying less than half for their holdings of what they paid twenty years ago, and paying it, moreover, not by way of rent but as a terminable annuity.  If there is one point which the events of the last generation have established in their eyes it is this—­that Parnell was justified in telling them to keep a firm grip of their holdings, and that Great Britain has admitted the justice of the grounds on which their agitation was based, by the revolution in the social fabric which she has set in train by the Land Purchase Acts.

Who was the witty Frenchman who declared that England was an island and that every Englishman was an island?  It is not only because of this preoccupation with their own affairs that their amour propre has been injured by their failure in Ireland.  One cannot expect to gather figs from thistles or grapes from thorns, and when Englishmen appreciate to how small an extent the Union has enured to the advantage of Ireland, they will understand the feelings which actuate the desire for self-government.  Is there anything which makes Englishmen believe that the extension of Land Purchase or the foundation of a university will make for a permanent settlement?  The history of the last half century can scarcely make them sanguine that when the burning questions of to-day have been disposed of they will find in the Imperial Parliament the knowledge, the interest, or the time necessary for dealing with new questions as they arise—­for arise they assuredly will.

Great Britain may legislate with lazy, ill-informed, good intentions, as Mr. Gladstone admitted was done in the case of the Encumbered Estates Act, or she may grant concessions piecemeal, and the minority which thereby she maintains will denounce every reform as mere panem et circenses by which she hopes to keep the majority subdued.

The “loyal minority” have cried “wolf” too often.  Nearly forty years ago, when Disestablishment was threatened, the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin said—­“You will put to Irish Protestants the choice between apostacy and expatriation, and every man among them who has money or position, when he sees his Church go, will leave the country.  If you do that, you will find Ireland so difficult to manage that you will have to depend on the gibbet and the sword.”