Yet the Abolitionists made their case out—­proved it, as lawyers say, “up to the very hilt,” before a single slave was released from bondage.  The Irish Church (it may be suggested) was abolished off-hand.  This apparent exception to the regular course of long argumentative controversy which in England marks all great innovations has misled Home Rulers, yet the exception is only apparent.  Long before 1869 the intelligence of England—­one might say of the civilised world—­had been convinced by the power of reason that the maintenance in a Roman Catholic country, and at the expense of a Roman Catholic population, of a Protestant ecclesiastical establishment was an indefensible anomaly.  The walls fell at the first blast which sounded attack, because the foundations had been argumentatively sapped and undermined for more than a generation.  With the cause of Home Rule it is far otherwise.  Its sudden progress has been characterised by a singular absence of systematic discussion.  No one supposes that its English advocates are deficient in talent or in zeal.  Mr. Gladstone, Mr. John Morley, Mr. Bryce—­to name no others—­are as competent apologists for any opinion they entertain as can well be found.  They have been put upon their mettle; they have addressed the nation in Parliament and out of Parliament; they have produced a certain number of reasons, which deserve respectful consideration, in support of their favourite innovation.  But no candid critic can feel that these eminent men, and other less distinguished labourers in the same cause, have put forward arguments of strength enough to account for the undoubted conviction of the reasoners.  Appeals to trust in the people, to confidence in human nature, to the strength of love as contrasted with the weakness of law, to shame for our past misgovernment of the Irish, to sanguine expectations of terminating a secular feud which has caused wretchedness to Ireland and has lessened the power of England, would appear in the judgment of orators addressing English electors likely to have much more weight with their audience than any attempt to prove that the establishment of a Parliament at Dublin will be conducive to the benefit of the Empire.  Nor is this wonderful.  The plain truth is that the strength of the Home Rule movement depends, as far as England is concerned, on a peculiar, though not of necessity a transitory, state of opinion.  The arguments of Home Rulers, whatever their worth (and I have not the remotest intention of denying that they have weight), derive at least half their power from their correspondence with dominant sentiments.  That this is so is admitted by the now celebrated appeal from the classes to the masses.  It is in its nature an appeal from a verdict likely to be pronounced by the understanding or the prejudice of educated men, to the emotions of the uneducated crowd.  The appeal may or may not be justifiable.  This is not the point for discussion; but the making of such an appeal necessarily