There seems to the thoughtless crowd—­whether rich or poor, and all men are thoughtless about most things, and many men about all things—­to be a certain inconsistency between reform and coercion; there is something absurd in the policy of “cuffs and kisses.”  But the inconsistency or absurdity is only apparent.  The necessity for carrying through by legal means an agrarian revolution—­and the passing of the Irish Land Act was in effect an admission by the English Parliament, that this necessity exists—­is a solid reason for the strict enforcement of justice.  Reform tends, as its immediate result, to produce lawlessness.  A wise driver holds his reins all the tighter because he is compelled to drive along the brink of a precipice.  Whether Coercion Acts, which it must be remembered have been known before now in England, and were known in Ireland during the era of her Parliamentary independence, and which are the sign of the difficulty of enforcing the law, are or are not to be tolerated as a necessary evil, depends on the answer to the inquiry, whether the Government of the United Kingdom can by just administration, and by just legislation, remove the source of Irish opposition to the law?  Answer the question affirmatively, and the outcry against coercion becomes unmeaning; answer the question negatively, and you produce an argument which tells with crushing power in favour not of Home Rule, but of Separation.

[Sidenote:  6.  The argument from inconvenience.]

The argument from the inconvenience to England.[27]—­Apologies for Home Rule drawn from foreign experience, deference due to the popular will, from the historical failure of England to govern Ireland with success and the like, have about them when employed by English members of Parliament a touch of unreality; they are reasons meant to satisfy the hearer, but do not convince the speaker.  When however we come to the argument for Home Rule drawn from the inconvenience of the present state of things to England generally, and to English members of Parliament in particular, we know at once that we are at any rate dealing with a real tangible serious plea which has (if anything) only too much weight with the person who employs it.  There is nothing in the whole relation of England to Ireland about which politicians are so well assured, as that the presence of a body of Parnellites at Westminster is an unutterable nuisance, and works intolerable evil.  Of the reality of their conviction we have the strongest proof.  The sufferings of Irish tenants, the difficulties or the wrongs of Irish landlords, the evils of coercion, the terror of assassination, but slightly ruffled the composure with which English statesmen faced the perplexities of the Irish problem.  They first began to think that the demand for Home Rule might have something in it when the refusal to erect a Parliament at Dublin meant the continuance of obstruction in the Parliament at Westminster.  The terror of obstruction has to speak the plain truth, done more to effect the bona fide conversion of English M.P.’s into advocates of Home Rule than any other single influence.