Grant, however (though the assumption is a hazardous one), that the creation of an Irish government and an Irish Parliament would of itself give to Ireland, even though she were still in many respects dependent on England, such a new sense of power and of responsibility as would enable her to create for herself a strong executive.  This concession is not enough to make out the argument in favour of Home Rule.  Laws ought to be not only strong but just, and Englishmen must consider whether rulers who had come to the head of affairs solely because they represented the strongest among many Irish factions or parties would he able to rule with justice.  The “Jacobin Conquest” installed a strong executive in power, but England could not be an accomplice in inaugurating a reign of terror.  The connection which under any form of Home Rule would bind together the parts of the present United Kingdom would be, it may be suggested, a guarantee against the supremacy of an Irish Robespierre or Danton.  Granted:  but if so, Home Rule would restrain an Irish revolution.  The strongest, in other words the most reckless leaders, would be prevented from coming to the front.  Ireland would not follow her own course, and since she would not be in truth self-governed, she would not reap the good fruits of self-government.

Nor in truth does the American version of our argument give much help to Home Rulers.

In more than one instance popular sentiment has in the United States defied the law of the land.  Nothing can be a better example of such defiance than the anti-rent war which raged in New York between 1839 and 1846.[23] The struggle exhibited all the recklessness of a no-rent agitation in Ireland with none of the excuses which can be urged in palliation of outrage by half-starving tenants; it produced a “reign of terror which for ten years practically suspended the operations of law and the payment of rent throughout the district” which was the field of the anti-rent movement; it ended in a nominal compromise which was a real victory for the anti-renters.  In this instance, be it remarked, no sentiment of nationality or State right came into play.  The law was hated, not because it was “foreign,” but because it enforced the obligation of an unpopular contract.  Landlords, it is now all but admitted, are not entitled to the full rights of citizens.  The triumph therefore of the anti-renters at New York may command a certain amount of sympathy.  The popular sentiment which in 1833 induced the people of Connecticut to boycott Miss Prudence Crandall cannot be brought under the sanction of any “higher law.”  Her crime was that she chose, obeying the dictates of her conscience, to open a school for negro girls in Connecticut.  She was subjected to every annoyance and insult which the most reckless boycotter could invent.  Legislation itself was turned against her, and the State failed utterly in the duty of protecting one of the most meritorious, and now, one is happy