nor would England gain much in credit.  The English Ministry can, as long as the connection with a colony endures, arrest Colonial legislation.  But the Home Government cannot for any effective purpose interfere with the administrative action of a Colonial Executive.  Given courts, an army, and a police controlled by the leaders of the Land League, and it is easy to see how rents might be abolished and landlords driven into exile without the passing by the Irish Parliament of a single Act which a Colonial Secretary could reasonably veto, or which even an English court could hold void under the provisions of the Colonial Laws Act.  It is indeed probable that wild legislation at Dublin might provoke armed resistance in Ulster.  But a movement which, were Ireland an independent nation, might ensure just government for all classes of Irishmen would, if Ireland were a colony, only add a new element of confusion to an already intolerable state of affairs.  Imagine for a moment what would have been the position of England if Englishmen had been convinced that Riel, though technically a rebel, was in reality a patriot, resisting the intolerable oppression of the Dominion Parliament, and you may form some slight idea of the feeling of shame and disgrace with which Englishmen would see British soldiers employed to suppress the revolt of Ulster against a Government which, without English aid, would find it difficult to resist or punish the insurgents.  The most painful and least creditable feature in the history of the United States is the apathy with which for thirty years the Northern States tolerated Southern lawlessness, and even now indirectly support Southern oppression.

2nd.—­If Colonial independence would be found in Ireland inconsistent with the protection of England’s interests and with the discharge of England’s duties, it would also fail to produce the one result which would be an adequate compensation for many probable or certain evils—­namely, the extinction of Irish discontent.

It is by no means certain, indeed, that Colonial independence would be accepted with genuine acquiescence by any class of Irishmen.  Certainly the demand for Grattan’s Parliament lends no countenance to the supposition that the people of Ireland would accept with satisfaction a political arrangement which is absolutely opposed in its character to the Constitution of 1782.[48] Suppose, however, for the sake of argument, that the Irish leaders and the Irish people accepted the offer of Colonial independence; we may be well assured that this acceptance would not produce good-will towards England, and this not from the perversity of the Irish nature, of which we hear a great deal too much, but from difficulties in the nature of things, of which we hear a great deal too little.  The restrictions on the authority of the Irish Parliament would, one cannot doubt, be, as safeguards for the authority of the Imperial Government, absolutely illusory.  But they would be intensely irritating.  Irish