For English readers, to whom this introductory chapter is chiefly addressed, I may here reiterate the opinion, which I have always held and often expressed, that there is no real conflict of interest between the two peoples and the two countries, and that the mutual misunderstanding which we may now hope to see removed is due to a wide difference of temperament and mental outlook.  The English mind has never understood the Irish mind—­least of all during the period of the ’Union of Hearts.’  It is equally true that the Irish have largely misunderstood both the English character and their own responsibility.  The result has been that their leaders, despite the brilliant capacity they have shown in presenting the unhappy case of their country to the rest of the world, have rarely presented it in the right way to the English people.  There have been many occasions during the last quarter of a century when a calm, well-reasoned statement of the economic disadvantages under which Ireland labours would, I am convinced, have successfully appealed to British public opinion.  It could have been shown that the development of Ireland—­the development not only of the resources of her soil but of the far greater wealth which lies in the latent capacities of her people—­was demanded quite as much in the interest of one country as in that of the other.

Here, indeed, is an untilled field for those to whom the Irish Question is yet a living one.  If I could think that each country fully realised its own responsibility in the matter, if I could think that the long-continued misunderstanding was at an end, nothing would induce me to trouble the waters at this auspicious hour, when a better feeling towards Ireland prevails in Great Britain, and when the Irish people are fully appreciative of the obviously sincere desire of England to be generous to Ireland.  But an examination of the events upon which the prevailing optimism is based will show that, unhappily, misunderstanding, though of another sort, still exists, and that Ireland is as much as ever a riddle to the English mind.

Now this new optimism in the English view of Ireland seems to be based, not upon a recognition of the development of what I have ventured to dignify with the title of a new philosophy of Irish progress, but upon a belief that the spirit of moderation and conciliation displayed by so many Irishmen in connection with the Land Act is due to the fact that my incomprehensible countrymen have, under a sudden emotion, put away childish things and learned to behave like grown-up Englishmen.  Throughout the press comments upon the Dunraven Conference and in public speeches both inside and outside Parliament there has run a sense that a sort of portent, a transformation scene, a sudden and magical alteration in the whole spirit and outlook of the Irish people, has come to pass.