of unparalleled proportions has diminished population without much diminishing poverty; why the disestablishment of the Anglican Church has increased rather than diminished the hostility to England of the Catholic priesthood; or why two Land Acts have not contented Irish farmers.  It is easy enough, in short, and this without having recourse to any theory of race, and without attributing to Irishmen either more or less of original sin than falls to the lot of humanity, to see how it is that imperfect statesmanship—­and all statesmanship it should be remembered is imperfect—­has failed of obtaining good results at all commensurate with its generally good intentions.  Failure, however, is none the less failure because its causes admit of analysis.  It is no defence to bankruptcy that an insolvent can, when brought before the Court, lucidly explain the errors which resulted in disastrous speculations.  The failure of English statesmanship, explain it as you will, has produced the one last and greatest evil which misgovernment can cause.  It has created hostility to the law in the minds of the people.  The law cannot work in Ireland, because the classes whose opinion in other countries supports the action of the Courts are in Ireland, even when not law-breakers, in full sympathy with law-breakers.  This fact, a Home Ruler may add, is for this purpose all the more instructive, if it be granted that the errors of British policy do not arise from injustice or ill-will to Irishmen.  The inference, he insists, to be drawn from the lesson of history is, that it is impossible for the Parliament of the United Kingdom to understand or to provide for Irish needs.  The law is hated and cannot be executed in Ireland because, as we are told on high authority, it comes before the Irish people in a foreign garb.  The law is detested, in short, not because it is unjust, but because it is English.  The reason why judges soldiers or policemen strive in vain to cope with lawlessness is, that they are in fact trying to enforce not so much the rule of justice as the supremacy of England.  The Austrian administration in Lombardy was never deemed to be bad—­it was very possibly better than any which the Italian kingdom can supply; the Austrian rule was hated not because the Austrians were bad rulers, but because they were foreigners.  In Ireland, as in Lombardy, permanent discontent is caused by the outraged sentiment of nationality.  Meet this sentiment, argues the friend of Home Rule, by the concession to Ireland of an independent Parliament.  The law which comes from Ireland’s own legislature will be obeyed because it is her own law, and will be enforced throughout Ireland by Irish officials supported by the sympathy of the Irish population.  Let Ireland manage her own affairs, and England will be freed from a task which she ought never to have taken up because she cannot perform it, and you will lay upon Ireland duties which she can perform but which she has never yet been either allowed or compelled