"Plus on considere l’Irlande, ses besoins et ses difficultes de toutes sortes, et plus on est porte a penser que ce changement dans l’etat de sa population agricole serait le vrai remede a ses maux....

“J’aurais mille autres raisons pour appuyer cette opinion; je m’arrete cependant.  Un lecteur anglais trouvera mes arguments incomplets.  Tout autre qu’un Anglais les jugera peut-etre surabondants."[19]

This opinion may be well-founded or ill-founded; but no wise statesman will reject it without the maturest consideration.

History, then, if fairly interrogated, gives this result:  Historical causes have generated in Ireland a condition of opinion which in all matters regarding the land impedes that enforcement of law which is the primary duty of every civilized government.

From this fact Home Rulers draw the inference that the law is hated because it is foreign, and that England should surrender to Irishmen the effort to enforce legal rights, since this duty is one which can be performed by a native and cannot be performed by any English or foreign authority.

This conclusion is clearly not supported by the premises.  If the source of popular discontent be agrarian, then the right course is to amend the land laws while improving the administrative system, and enforcing justice between man and man.

A Home Ruler may, however, if hard driven, say that my interpretation of history is erroneous, and that a hatred to English law, and to all things English, and not a special dislike to the land law, is the sentiment which prevails over every other feeling of the Irish people.  It is difficult to me to see how this view can be seriously maintained.  Let us grant however for a moment that Home Rulers are right, and that millions of Irishmen are inspired with the passion of nationality.  Even on this supposition the Home Rule doctrine stands in a bad way.  If the demand of the Irish people be like that of the Italian people—­a demand for recognised nationality—­then the demand must be satisfied, if at all, not by Home Rule, but by independence.  The most eminent among English Home Rulers believes that the law is hated in Ireland because it comes before the Irish people in a foreign garb.  Mr. Froude in substance agrees in this matter with Mr. Gladstone, since he holds that “the real grievance is our presence in Ireland at all.”  But the eminent statesman and the distinguished historian draw a different inference from the same premises.  Mr. Gladstone infers that Ireland can be satisfied by semi-independence.  Mr. Froude infers that if we are to meet Irish wishes we must let Ireland be free.  Mr. Froude’s logic will be to most persons far more intelligible than the logic of the Liberal leader.  Here, at any rate, we come to the true issue suggested by the phenomena of Irish history.  Is Irish discontent due in the main to agrarian or to political causes?  On the answer to this enquiry depends, as far as the argument we have in hand goes, the line of right policy in Ireland.  But neither answer favours the contention of Home Rulers.[20]