political rights which possibly they had better never have received, and has falsified the result of Presidential elections.  When we are told that the South votes solid for a Democratic President, we must remember that in the Southern States the Negro vote is “controlled”; and that in reckoning the number of votes to which a State is entitled in virtue of its population, the Negro voters of the South are counted for as much as the uncontrolled White voters of the North.  Whether this state of things will always be contentedly borne by the Northern States is a matter on which a foreigner can form no opinion.  It is a condition of affairs which does not conduce to respect for law, and the satisfaction with which thoughtful Americans regard a policy founded on the tolerance of illegality confirms the belief suggested by other circumstances, that deference to opinion tends in the United States to undermine respect for law; it certainly does not tend to show that self-government has much connection with justice.

The argument, in short, from the good effects of self-government appears, when examined, either to be an argument which tells far more strongly in favour of Separation than of Home Rule, or else to be an argument which shows only that England might gain some immediate advantage from shutting her eyes to injustice committed by an Irish government.

[Sidenote:  5.  Argument from Coercion Acts.]

The argument from the necessity for Coercion Acts.—­Coercion Acts are (according to popular apprehension) enactments suspending the operation of the ordinary law, and conflicting therefore with the principles of the English Constitution.  Order has been maintained in Ireland since the Union (we are told) mainly by means of Coercion Acts.  The English democracy, it is argued, cannot acquiesce any longer in these violations of the Constitution; but since order must somehow be maintained in Ireland, and Coercion Acts must no longer be passed, the English democracy must surrender the duty of maintaining the law into the hands of the Irish people, who, as is assumed by Home Rulers, can exact obedience to the law of Ireland without the use of exceptional legislation.

[Sidenote:  Criticism.]

A lawyer irritated by the folly of popular declamation is tempted to dismiss all objections to Coercion Acts, together with all arguments founded upon such objections, with one peremptory remark—­namely, that since a law is merely a rule which men are compelled to obey by the power of the State, and Coercion is but another name for compulsory obedience to the law, to object to Coercion is in reality to object to law itself, or in effect to the existence of political society.  The temptation to cut down a popular delusion by some such summary criticism as this is great, but it is a temptation which at all costs must be resisted.  Vague ideas, which have obtained general currency, are, in spite of their inaccuracy,