British policy; while his view, as expressed in the House of Lords,[38] that a preparatory regime of benevolent despotism, showing “the obvious solicitude of the Government for the welfare of the people,” and taking shape “in a hundred and one works of material advancement,” would “win us friends and diminish our enemies,” evinces an ignorance of the ordinary motives influencing the conduct of white men, which would be incredible if we had not Irish experience before us.  “Twenty years of resolute government,” said Lord Salisbury.  “Home Rule will be killed by kindness,” said many of his successors.  In later chapters I shall have to show what well-meant kindness and resolute government have done for Ireland.  If even at this late hour Lord Milner would frankly acknowledge his error, I believe he would enormously enhance his reputation in the eyes of the whole Empire.

As practical men, let us remember that the Constitutions of 1906 would not have become law if, instead of being issued under Letters Patent, they had had to pass through Parliament in the form of a Bill.  The whole Conservative party, following Lord Milner, was vehemently against the Letters Patent.  Those who witnessed the debate upon them in the House of Commons will not forget the scene.  I recall this fact without any desire to entangle myself in the current controversy about the Upper House, but with the strictly practical object of showing that because a Home Rule Bill is defeated in Parliament, as the Irish Bills of 1886 and 1893 were defeated, it does not necessarily follow that its policy is wrong.  Nor does it follow that its policy is wrong if that defeat in Parliament is confirmed by a General Election.  Home Rule for Canada never had to pass, and would not have passed even the Parliamentary test.  Skilful and determined organization could have wrecked even the Australian Constitutions.  No one, certainly, could have guaranteed a favourable result of a General Election taken expressly upon the Transvaal and Orange River Constitutions of 1906, with the whole machinery of one of the great parties thrown into the scale against them.  We know the case made against Ireland on such occasions, and the case against the conquered Republics was made in Parliament with ten times greater force.  If anyone doubts this, let him compare the speeches on Ireland in 1886 and 1893 with the speeches on South Africa in 1905-06.  With the alteration of a name or two, with the substitution, for example, of Johannesburg for Ulster, the speeches against South African and Irish Home Rule might be almost interchangeable.  For electioneering purposes, evidences, in word and act, of Boer treason, rapacity, and vindictiveness, could have been made by skilful orators to seem damning and unanswerable.  All the arts for inflaming popular passion under the pretext of “patriotism” would have been used, and we know that patriotism sometimes assumes strange disguises.  The material would have been rich and easily accessible.  Instead of having to ransack ancient numbers of Irish or American newspapers for incautious phrases dropped by Mr. Redmond or Mr. O’Brien in moments of unusual provocation, the speeches of Botha, Steyn, and De Wet, during the war, and even at the Peace Conference, would have been ready for the hoardings and the fly-sheets, and they would have had an appreciable effect.