Experience of the world teaches every man that in complicated affairs of private life, involving questions, say, both of money and of sentiment, nothing so surely prevents quarrels as to separate in the clearest manner possible matters of business from matters of feeling.  In determining a dispute between A. and B., a great step is gained when a friend induces each of the parties first to state clearly his exact legal rights and his exact pecuniary interest, and only when these facts are made clear to consider what are the concessions fairly to be demanded from him as a matter, not of right, but of liberality.  Nothing, again, is plainer in the conduct of controversies between man and man, than that if A. intends to exact his full legal rights from B., the most irritating defence of A.’s conduct is his pretence of acting solely with a view to B.’s own good; and that, on the other hand, no manner of enforcing A.’s claims against B. causes so little unnecessary vexation to B. as for A. to say openly that he demands his rights because they are his rights, and because to demand them is his interest.  Here, if nowhere else, the rules which apply to private disputes apply also to political controversies.  If millions of Englishmen refuse a request made by millions of Irishmen, by far the least irritating form of refusal is open avowal that the reason for denying a separate Parliament to Ireland is the irreparable injury which Home Rule will work both to Great Britain and to the British Empire.  This assertion has the merit, which even in politics is not small, of truth.  If the Parliamentary independence of Ireland threatened as little damage to England as the Parliamentary independence of Victoria, an Irish legislature would meet in Dublin before the end of the year.  Englishmen, it is true, do not believe that Ireland would in the long run gain by the possession of legislative independence.  It is not, however, the doubt as to the reality of the blessing to be conferred on Ireland, but the certainty as to the injury to be done to England, which causes their opposition to Home Rule.  To base this opposition upon the probable inconsistency between a Home Rule policy and the true interests of Ireland, involves the assumption that Englishmen are better judges of what makes for the true interest of Ireland than are the majority of Irishmen.  The soundness of this assumption must seem to any man, who either recalls the most obvious facts of Irish history, or notes the depth of ignorance as to all things Irish which prevails even among our educated classes, to be open to reasonable question.  What is not questionable is that the assertion, in whatever form it be made, that three millions of Irishmen do not understand what is good for themselves must arouse in their hearts deep and natural anger.  If indeed the claim of Great Britain to look in this matter of Home Rule solely to the effect of Home Rule on British interests, were equivalent