Whatever else Home Rule might give to Ireland, one gift it assuredly would not bring with it.  It would not endow the country with wealth.  To Irish enthusiasm and patriotism illusions on this matter are pardonable.  In the English advocate of Home Rule they are unpardonable.  Ireland is, and must, under any form of government conceivable, for a length of time remain a poor country.  Capital knows nothing of patriotism or sentiment.  Commerce has no partiality for the masses.  Credit cherishes no trust towards the people.  The one prediction which we may make with confidence is that a measure of Home Rule would not increase Irish capital, and would shake Irish credit.  The rumour of Home Rule has already, it is said, disturbed the course of business in Ireland.  From the nature of things, then, the establishment of Federalism would lead to bitter disappointment.  The country would not enjoy the dignity of independence; it would not enjoy the comfort of wealth.  Every Irishman would feel that he had been cheated of his hopes, and this not because he is an Irishman, but because he is a man.  It is human to expect far more from even the most beneficial of revolutions than any political change can bring.  The unity of Italy was well worth all the price it cost.  The unity of Germany gave intense gratification to natural feelings of national pride.  Yet there are probably many even in the Italian Kingdom who sigh for the light taxes of the Bourbon or Papal rule, and Germans who glory in the greatness of the Empire flee by thousands to the United States that they may escape the burden of conscription.  The disappointment which naturally attends a great change would in the case of Ireland be specially bitter.  To what cause would the disappointment be attributed?  The answer is easy to find.  If taxation increased—­as it probably would; if wealth did not increase—­as it certainly would not; if the sense of semi-independence did not produce the hope, the energy, the new life, the regeneration which enthusiasts consider to be the natural result of nationality—­if anything, in short, failed to go according to the hopes of men who had formed hopes which a miracle itself could hardly satisfy—­the blame for the non-fulfilment of groundless anticipations would rest upon the Confederacy—­that is in other words, upon England.  To suppose this, is not to attribute special unreasonableness to Irishmen.  If Italy had been forced to accept, instead of her longed-for independence, the local self-government which might be conceded to the State of an Austrian Federation, we may be quite sure that the Grist Tax, the Sicilian Banditti, the intrigues of France in Tunis, the perversity of the Pope, the poverty of Italian workmen, the factiousness of Italian politicians, every evil, in short, real or imaginary, under which Italy now suffers, or has suffered since 1870—­would have been attributed to her connection with a Union presided over by the Austrian Emperor.  National independence, like every other form of independence, has at least this merit, that it compels men to take their fate into their own hands, and to feel that they themselves or the circumstances of the world are the causes of their misfortunes.  Semi-independence makes it easy for men to attribute every mishap to the absence of absolute freedom.