of the tendency in an Irish government, awkwardly alternating with that to which I have just adverted, to look over the heads of the people of Ireland, and to consider mainly what will be thought by the ignorant public in England.  But these sources of incessant perturbation must not be left out.  The fault of Irish centralization is not that it is strong, but that it is weak.  Weak it must remain until Parliament either approves of the permanent suspension of the Irish writs, or else devises constitutional means for making Irish administration responsible to Irish representatives.

If experience is decisive against the policy of the past, experience too, all over the modern world, indicates the better direction for the future.  I will not use my too scanty space in repeating any of the great wise commonplaces in praise of self-government.  Here they are superfluous.  In the case of Ireland they have all been abundantly admitted in a long series of measures, from Catholic Emancipation down to Lord O’Hagan’s Jury Law and the Franchise and Redistribution Acts of a couple of years ago.  The principle of self-government has been accepted, ratified, and extended in a hundred ways.  It is only a question of the form that self-government shall take.  Against the form proposed by the late Ministry a case is built up that rests on a series of prophetic assumptions.  These assumptions, from the nature of the case, can only be met by a counter-statement of fair and reasonable probabilities.  Let us enumerate some of them.

1.  It is inferred that, because the Irish leaders have used violent language and resorted to objectionable expedients against England during the last six years, they would continue in the same frame of mind after the reasons for it had disappeared.  In other words, because they have been the enemies of a Government which refused to listen to a constitutional demand, therefore they would continue to be its enemies after the demand had been listened to.  On this reasoning, the effect is to last indefinitely and perpetually, notwithstanding the cessation of the cause.  Our position is that all the reasonable probabilities of human conduct point the other way.  The surest way of justifying violent language and fostering treasonable designs, is to refuse to listen to the constitutional demand.

2.  The Irish, we are told, hate the English with an irreconcilable hatred, and would unquestionably use any Constitution as an instrument for satisfying their master passion.  Irrational hatred, they say, can be treated by rational men with composure.  The Czechs of Bohemia are said to be irreconcilable, yet the South Germans bear with their hatred; and if we cannot cure we might endure the antipathy of Ireland.  Now, as for the illustration, I may remark that the hatred of the Czechs would be much too formidable for German composure, if the Czechs did not happen to possess a provincial charter and a special constitution of their own.  If the Irish