has done.  If his policy be in itself dangerous and disloyal to the true interests of the people of our islands, let it be condemned.  But if it be the policy which has the best promise for the peace, the prosperity, and the mutual good will of those peoples, he and those who follow him would be culpable indeed were they to be deterred by the condemnation which they have so often expressed, and which they still express, for some of the past acts of a particular party, from declaring that the aims of that party were substantially right aims, and from now pressing upon the country what their conscience approves.

However, as the Home Rule Liberals and Nationalists, taken together, are in a minority (although a minority which obtains recruits at many bye-elections) in the present Parliament, it is not from them that fresh proposals are expected.  They will, of course, continue to speak, write, and agitate on behalf of the views they hold.  But practical attempt to deal with Irish troubles must for the present come from the Tory Ministry; for in the English system of government those who command a Parliamentary majority are responsible for legislation as well as administration, and are censured not merely if their legislation is bad, but if it is not forthcoming when events call for it.

Why, it may be asked, should Lord Salisbury’s Government burn its fingers over Ireland, as so many governments have burnt their fingers before?  Why not let Ireland alone, giving to foreign affairs and to English and Scottish reforms all the attention which these too much neglected matters need?

Well would it be for England, as well as for English Ministries, if Ireland could be simply let alone, her maladies left to be healed by the soft, slow hand of nature.  But Irish troubles call aloud to be dealt with, and that promptly.  They stand in the way of all other reforms, indeed of all other business.  Letting alone has been tried, and it has succeeded no better, even in times less urgent than the present, than the usual policy of coercion followed by concession, or concession followed by coercion.

There are three aspects of the Irish question, three channels by which the troubles of the “distressful island” stream down upon us, forcing whoever now rules or may come to rule in England to attempt some plan for dealing with them.  I will take them in succession.

The first is the Parliamentary difficulty.  In the British House of Commons, with its six hundred and seventy members, there are nearly ninety Irish Nationalists.  They are a well-disciplined body, voting as one man, though capable of speaking enough for a thousand.  They have no interest in English or Scotch or colonial or Indian affairs, but only in Irish, and look upon the vote which they have the right of giving upon the former solely as a means of furthering their own Irish aims.  They are, therefore, in the British Parliament not merely a foreign body,