Would Mr. Chamberlain recast his argument now?  Unhappily, we shall not know.  But it does seem to me that recent history and his own temperament would force him to do so.  As in his abandonment of Free Trade, it was a strong and sincere Imperialist instinct that eventually transformed him from the advocate of provincial Home Rule into the relentless enemy of Home Rule in any shape.  Take the Imperial argument, shaken to its foundations by subsequent events, from the case he stated in 1893, and what remains?  Two pleas only—­first, the abnormality of Irishmen; second, Ireland’s proximity to England.  The first expresses the old traditional view that Ireland is outside the pale of all human analogy; the exception to all rules; her innate depravity and perversity such that she would abuse power where others respect it, derive enmity where others derive friendship, and willingly ruin herself by internal dissension and extravagant ambitions in order, if possible, at the same time to ruin England.  Unconnected, however loosely, with the high Imperial argument, I do not believe that this plea could have been used with sincerity by Mr. Chamberlain even in 1893.  He was a democrat, devoted to the cause of enfranchising and trusting the people; and this plea was, after all, only the same anti-democratic argument applied to Ireland, and tipped with racial venom, which had been used for generations by most Tories and many Whigs against any extension of popular power.  Lord Randolph Churchill, the Tory democrat, in his dispassionate moments, always scouted it, resting his case against Home Rule on different grounds.  It was strange enough to see the argument used by the Radical author of all the classic denunciations of class ascendancy and the classic eulogies of the sense, forbearance and generosity of free electorates.  It was all the stranger in that Mr. Chamberlain himself a few years before had committed himself to a scheme of restricted self-government for Ireland, and in the debates on Mr. Gladstone’s first Home Rule Bill of 1886, when the condition of Ireland was far worse than in 1893, had declared himself ready to give that country a Constitution similar to that enjoyed by Quebec or Ontario within the Dominion of Canada.  But politics are politics.  Under the inexorable laws of the party game, politicians are advocates and swell their indictments with every count which will bear the light.  The system works well enough in every case but one—­the indictment of a fellow-nation for incapacity to rule itself.  There, both in Ireland and everywhere else, as I shall show, it works incalculable mischief.  Once committed irrevocably to the opposition of Mr. Gladstone’s Bills, Mr. Chamberlain, standing on Imperial ground, which seemed to him and his followers firm enough then, used his unrivalled debating powers to traduce and exasperate the Irish people and their leaders by every device in his power.