representative bodies by the veto of a bureaucracy in Dublin, there would arise occasions for quarrel and irritation more serious than now exist.[70] Those who once begin to repair an old and tottering building are led on, little by little, into changes they did not at starting contemplate.  So it will be if once the task is undertaken of reforming the confessedly bad and indefensible system of Irish administration.  We may stop at some half-way house on the way, but Home Rule stands at the end of the road.

Supposing, then, that the Nationalist party, retaining its present strength and unity, perseveres in its present demands, there is every prospect that these demands will be granted.  But will it persevere?  There are among the English Dissentients those who prophesy that it will break up, as such parties have broken up before—­will lose hope and wither away.  Or the support of the Irish peasantry may be withdrawn—­a result which some English politicians expect from a final settlement of the land question in the interest of the tenants.  Any of these contingencies is possible, but at present most improbable.  The moment when long-cherished aims begin to seem attainable is not that at which men are disposed to abandon them.

There are, however, other reasons which suggest the likelihood of a change in English sentiment on the whole matter.  The surprise with which the Bill of last April was received has worn off.  The alarm is wearing off too.  Those who set their teeth at what seemed to them a surrender to the Parnellites and their Irish-American allies, having relieved their temper by an emphatic No, have begun to ponder things more calmly.  The English people are listening to the arguments from Irish history that are now addressed to them.  They will be moved by the solid grounds of policy which that history suggests; will understand that what they have deemed insensate hatred is the natural result of long misgovernment, and will disappear with time and the removal of its causes.  Many of the best minds of both nations will be at work to discover some method of reconciling Irish self-government with imperial supremacy and union free from the objections brought against the Bills of 1886.  It is reasonable to expect that they may greatly improve upon these measures, which were prepared under pressure from a clamorous Opposition.  What Mr. Disraeli once called the historical conscience of the country will appreciate those great underlying principles to which Mr. Gladstone’s policy appeals.  It has been accused of being a policy of despair; and may have commended itself to some who supported it as being simply a means of ridding England of responsibility.  But to others it seemed, and more truly, a policy of faith; not, indeed, of thoughtless optimism, but of faith according to the definition which calls it “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”  Faith, by which nations as well as men must live, means nothing less than a