In this work the very men whose mistaken conception of a united Ireland I have criticised will, I doubt not, take a leading part.  In many respects, and these not the least important, no one could desire a better instrument for the achievement of great reforms than the Irish party.  They are far beyond any similar group of English members in rhetorical skill and quickness of intelligence and decision, qualities which no doubt belong to the mechanism rather than the soul of politics, but which the practical worker in public life will not despise.  But even when tried by a higher standard the Irish members need not fear the judgment of history.  They have often, in my opinion, misconceived the true interests of their country, but they have been faithful to those interests as they understood them, and have proved themselves notably superior to sordid personal aims.  These gifts and virtues are not common, but still rarer is it to see such gifts and virtues cursed with the doom of futility.  The influence of the Irish political leaders has neither advanced the nation’s march through the wilderness nor taught the people how they are to dispense with manna from above when they reach the Promised Land.  With all their brilliancy, they have thrown but little helpful light on any Irish problem.  In this want of political and economic foresight Irish Nationalist politicians, with some exceptions whom it would be invidious to name, have fallen lamentably short of what might be expected of Irish intellect.  For the eight years during which I represented an Irish constituency I always felt that an Irish night in the House of Commons was one of the strangest and most pathetic of spectacles.  There were the veterans of the Irish party hardened by a hundred fights, ranging from Venezuela to the Soudan in search of battlefields, making allies of every kind of foreign potentate, from President Cleveland to the Mahdi, from Mr. Kruger to the Akhoom of Swat, but looking with suspicion on every symptom of an independent national movement in Ireland; masters of the language of hate and scorn, yet mocked by inevitable and eternal failure; winners of victories that turn to dust and ashes; devoted to their country, yet, from ignorance of the real source of its malady, ever widening the gaping wound through which its life-blood flows.  While I recall these scenes, there rises before my mind the picture vividly drawn by Miss Lawless of their prototypes, the ‘Wild Geese,’ who carried their swords into foreign service after the final defeat of the Stuarts:—­

    War-battered dogs are we,
    Fighters in every clime,
    Fillers of trench and of grave,
    Mockers, bemocked by Time;
    War-dogs, hungry and grey,
    Gnawing a naked bone,
    Fighting in every clime
    Every cause but our own.[15]