her majesty’s reign, ought to be the permanent Viceroy, with the necessary addition to his income.  The office would afford an excellent training for his duties as king.  The attraction of the Princess of Wales would make the Irish court very brilliant.  It would afford the opportunity of contact with real royalty, not the shadowy sort of thing we have had—­reflected through Viceroys very few of whom were ever en rapport with the Irish nation.  Not one of them could so speak to the people as to elicit a spark of enthusiasm.  Of course they could not have the true ring of royalty, for royalty was not in them.  But they could not play the part well.  One simple sentence from the Queen or the Prince of Wales, or even from Prince Arthur, would be worth all the theatrical pomp they could display in a generation.  Those noblemen had no natural connection with the kingdom, fitting them to take the first place in it.  They were not hereditary chiefs.  They were not elected by the people.  They were mere ‘casual’ chief-governors; and they formed no ties with the nation that could not be broken as easily as the spider’s thread.  The hereditary principle has immense force in Ireland.  The landlords are now seeking to weaken it; or rather they are ignoring it altogether, and substituting the commercial principle in dealing with their tenants, preferring not the most devoted adherents of the family, but the man with most money.  But I warn them that they are doing so at the peril of their order.  A prince who was heir presumptive to the throne as Viceroy, and who, when he ascended the throne, should be crowned King of Ireland, as well as King of Great Britain, crowned in his own Irish palace, and on the Lia Fail or stone of destiny, preserved at Westminster, would save many a million to the British exchequer, for it would be no longer necessary to support a large army of occupation to keep the country.  If the throne of Queen Victoria stood in Dublin, there is not a Fenian in Ireland who would not die in its defence.  Standing in Westminster it is doubtful whether its attraction is sufficient to retain the hearts even of Orangemen.  There, it is the English throne.  So the Englishman regards it with instinctive jealousy.  He feels it is his own; but, say what we may, the Irish loyalist, when he approaches it, is made to feel, by a thousand signs, that he is a stranger and an intruder.  He returns to his own bereaved country with a sad heart, and a bitter spirit.  Can he be Anglicised?  Put this question to an English philosopher, and he will answer with Mr. Froude—­’Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?’ We can bridge the channel with fast steamers; but who will bridge the gulf, hitherto impassable, which separates the English Dives from the Irish Lazarus?

‘We have,’ said Canning, ’for many years been erecting a mound—­not to assist or improve, but to thwart nature; we have raised it high above the waters, and it has stood there, frowning hostility and effecting separation.  In the course of time, however, the necessities of man, and the silent workings of nature, have conspired to break down this mighty structure, till there remains of it only a narrow isthmus, standing