It is true, no doubt, that the old feud between Protestant and Catholic might, perhaps, not instantly die down to the last smouldering embers of it all over Ireland.  But we may remark that there is no perceptible bad blood between Protestant and Catholic, outside of one notorious corner.  Second, the real bitterness of the feud arose from the fact that Protestantism was associated with an exclusive and hostile ascendency, which would now be brought to an end.  Whatever feeling about what is called Ulster exists in the rest of Ireland, arises not from the fact that there are Protestants in Ulster, but that the Protestants are anti-National.  Third, the Catholics would no longer be one compact body for persecuting, obscurantist, or any other evil purposes; the abatement of the national struggle would allow the Catholics to fall into the two natural divisions of Clerical and Liberal.  What we may be quite sure of is that the feud will never die so long as sectarian pretensions are taken as good reasons for continuing bad government.

It is true, again, that a constitution would not necessarily remove agrarian discontent.  But it is just as true that you will never remove agrarian discontent without a constitution.  Mr. Dicey, on consideration, will easily see why.  Here we come to an illustration, and a very impressive illustration it is, of the impotence of England to do for Ireland the good which Ireland might do for herself.  Nobody just now is likely to forget the barbarous condition of the broad fringe of wretchedness on the west coast of Ireland.  Of this Lord Dufferin truly said in 1880 that no legislation could touch it, that no alteration in the land laws could effectually ameliorate it, and that it must continue until the world’s end unless something be contrived totally to change the conditions of existence in that desolate region.  Parliament lavishly pours water into the sieve in the shape of Relief Acts.  Even in my own short tenure of office I was responsible for one of these terribly wasteful and profoundly unsatisfactory measures.  Instead of relief, what a statesman must seek is prevention of this great evil and strong root of evil; and prevention means a large, though it cannot be a very swift, displacement of the population.  But among the many experts with whom I have discussed this dolorous and perplexing subject, I never found one of either political party who did not agree that a removal of the surplus population was only practicable if carried out by an Irish authority, backed by the solid weight of Irish opinion.  Any exertion of compulsory power by a British Minister would raise the whole country-side in squalid insurrection, government would become impossible, and the work of transplantation would end in ghastly failure.  It is misleading and untrue, then, to say that there is no possible relation between self-government and agrarian discontent, misery, and backwardness; and when Mr. Dicey and others tell us that the British Parliament is able to do all good things for Ireland, I would respectfully ask them how a British Parliament is to deal with the Congested Districts.