to violent factions.  Grant again—­and this is granting a good deal—­that Ireland might become a province of France, there is still some difficulty in seeing why Englishmen can live without fear within sight of Boulogne, and yet must tremble at the thought of French regiments assembling in Dublin.  The command of the sea moreover would, whether Ireland were or were not aided by foreign allies, be a complete protection for England against invasion.  If England’s naval supremacy were lost, the power of the British Empire would in any case be gone.  The vital matter for us is to retain command of the seas.  Our capacity for doing this would not be greatly affected by Irish independence.  America, further, and France are the only allies to whom Ireland could look for aid.  The notion that the United States would consent to receive Ireland under any terms into the Union must appear to any one who has studied American politics the wildest of dreams.  It supposes that the Americans would, without any gain to themselves, disarrange the whole balance of their constitution, and by involving themselves in all the complexities of European politics depart from the path which they have continuously pursued, and which is marked out to them by the plainest rules of common sense, and, it is hardly an exaggeration to say, by the laws of nature.  A people who decline to annex Cuba, and are fully willing to wait till circumstances bring Canada into the Union and give America possession of Mexico, are not likely to incorporate Ireland.  The alliance of France is a different matter.  Reflection, however, mitigates the dread of its occurrence.  Active alliance with Ireland would mean war with England, and now for seventy years France and England have been at peace.  This state of things is the more remarkable because there have during that period arisen occasions for discord, and because no feeling of sentimental friendship forbids warfare.  The true guarantee for peace between nations which were long deemed hereditary foes is the immense interest which each has in abstaining from war.  Could the state of things which existed at the beginning of the century be revived, thousands of Englishmen and Frenchmen would be ruined.  The security for peace depending upon national interest would not be diminished were Ireland to-morrow proclaimed an independent republic.  That this independence would facilitate French attack is undeniable, but attack would not be the more likely to occur.  Add to all this that Irish discontent or sedition would, during a war, help France as much as Irish independence.  Ireland is no doubt the weak point in the defences of Great Britain.  This no one denies.  The only question is whether and to what extent the independence of that country would widen the breach in England’s defensive system.

[Sidenote:  Possible advantages of Separation]

Any one who attempts to forecast the probable evils to England of Irish independence should keep one recollection constantly before his mind.  The wisest thinkers of the eighteenth century (including Burke) held that the independence of the American Colonies meant the irreparable ruin of Great Britain.  There were apparently solid grounds for this belief; experience has proved it to be without foundation.