* * * * *

A survey of the arguments in favour of Home Rule suggests the following reflections: 

The arguments, taken as a whole, do undoubtedly show that the present state of things is accompanied by considerable evils or inconveniences.  They show what no one who has given a thought to the matter ever doubted, that the relation between England and Ireland is unsatisfactory.  They are, as far as they go, objections to the maintenance of the Union, but neither the feelings which favour Home Rule, nor the reasons by which they are supported, tell in reality in favour of Home Rule policy.  They scarcely tend to show that Home Rule would cure the evils complained of; they certainly do not show, they only assume, that Home Rule in Ireland would not be injurious to England.  They are, in short, arguments in favour of Irish independence; every one of them would be seen in its true character if the Irish demand should take the form of a claim that Ireland should become an independent nation.  Meanwhile, even on the Home Rule view, the case stands thus:  the present condition of things excites Irish discontent, and involves great evils.  We have before us but three courses:—­Maintenance of the Union; the concession of Irish independence; the concession of Home Rule to Ireland.  The Home Ruler urges that the last is the best course left open to us.  To decide whether this be so or not requires a fair examination of the possibilities which each course presents to England.

FOOTNOTES: 

[4] For the constitution of Austria-Hungary see Ulbrich’s Oesterreich-Ungarn in Marquardsen’s Handbuch des Oeffentlichen Rechts; Francis Deak, with preface by M.E.  Grant Duff; Home Rule in Austria-Hungary, by David King, in the Nineteenth Century, January 1886, p. 35.

[5] Ulbrich, pp. 15, 76, 77.

[6] See Marquardsen, 28-30.

[7] This is, in my judgment, true even of such federations as the United States or the Swiss confederacy.

[8] Froude’s ‘English in Ireland,’ vol. 3, pp. 581, 582.

[9] See especially on this subject 1 De Beaumont, ‘L’Irlande,’ Partie Historique, pp. 15-207.

[10] “On ne saurait considerer attentivement l’Irlande, etudier son histoire et ses revolutions, observer ses moeurs et analyser ses lois, sans reconnaitre que ses malheurs, auxquels ont concouru tant d’accidents funestes, ont eu et ont encore de nos jours, pour cause principale, une cause premiere, radicale, permanente; et qui domine toutes les autres; cette cause, c’est une mauvaise aristocratie.” 1 De Beaumont, ‘L’Irlande,’ deuxieme partie, p. 228.  The only objection which may be fairly taken to De Beaumont’s language, though not to his essential meaning, is, that the words he uses occasionally suggest the idea that he attributes some special vice of nature, so to speak, to the landed classes in Ireland,