If, however, systematic argument lacks the animation of political discussion or dispute, it possesses its own counterbalancing merits, and the mode of treating Home Rule purposely adopted in these pages has, it is conceived, two not inconsiderable advantages.  The first of these advantages is that it diverts the mind from a crowd of personal, temporary, and in themselves trivial considerations, which, though they possess not only an apparent but also a real significance, are at bottom irrelevant to the final decision of the true points at issue.  Whether, for example, Mr. Gladstone ought to have proclaimed himself a Home Ruler before the elections of 1885, whether Lord Salisbury’s reference, or alleged reference, to twenty years of coercion was or was not judicious, and did or did not receive a fair interpretation from his opponents; whether Lord Carnarvon misled Mr. Parnell, or whether the Irish leader was a dupe to his own astuteness; whether Mr. Chamberlain ought to have joined the late Ministry, or, having gone into the Cabinet, ought never to have left it; what have been the motives consciously or unconsciously affecting Mr. Gladstone’s course of action—­these and a hundred other enquiries of the like sort, which engage the attention and distract the judgment of the public, possess, in the eyes of any serious thinker occupied in estimating the strength of the arguments for and against Home Rule, no material importance whatever.  His concern is the merit or demerit of a legislative enactment.  He is not concerned at all with the conduct or the character of legislators.  Mr. Gladstone’s motives may be the highest which can be ascribed to the Premier by the voice of admiring friendship, or the basest which can be imputed to him by the unfairness of political rancour.  In any case they are irrelevant to the matter in hand.  An unwise measure will not become a beneficial law because its author is a saint or a patriot; a statesmanlike law will not turn out a curse to the country because its defender is an intriguer or a traitor.  We all see that this is so if we carry our view back to the controversies of the last generation; the personalities of fifty or sixty years ago are reduced before our eyes into their real pettiness.  The first Reform Bill still retains its importance for as a measure which for good or bad revolutionised the constitution; its beneficial or pernicious effects are still traceable in the England of to-day; but its evils are not lessened by the acknowledged virtues of Lord Althorpe, nor are its good effects marred by the ambition of Brougham or the violence of O’Connell.  It is no slight recommendation of any mode of reasoning if it suggests to us the prudence of judging the policy of 1886 in the spirit and by the standards which every man of sense applies to the policy of 1832.  Academic disquisition has its faults, but ought to produce academic calmness; a class-room is after all a better place for quiet reflection than the House of Commons or the hustings.