Have Unionists really no better prescription for the constitutional difficulties caused by the Union than to reduce the representation of Ireland in Parliament so as to give Ireland still less control than at present over her own affairs?  Is that seriously their last word in statesmanship, to exasperate Nationalist Ireland without even providing in any appreciable degree a mechanical remedy for disordered political functions?  The idea has only to be stated to be dismissed.  It is not even practical politics.  Some things are sheer impossibilities; and to leave the Union system as it is, while reducing representation, is one of them.

We revert, then, to a contemplation of the well-tried expedient, “Trust, and you will be trusted.”  But then we have to meet pessimists of two descriptions, the honest and the merely cynical.  The honest pessimist (often, unhappily, an educated Irishman) says:  “The Irish in Ireland are an incurably criminal race.  They differ from Irishmen elsewhere and from Anglo-Saxons everywhere.  Air and soil are unaccountable.  The Union policy has been, and remains, a painful but a quite inevitable necessity.  It is sound, now and for all time.”  The cynical pessimist, on the other hand, admits the errors of past policy, but says frankly that it is too late to change.  “We have gone too far, raised passions we cannot allay.”  I shall not try further to confute the honest pessimist.  The preceding chapters have been written in vain if they do not shatter the theory of original sin.  And to the cynical pessimist, who is a reincarnation of our old friend Fitzgibbon (for that clear-headed statesman frankly imputed original sin to the conquerors of Ireland, as well as to the conquered), I would only say:  “Use your common sense.”  These panics over the vagaries and excesses of an Irish Parliament, always groundless, are beginning to look highly ridiculous.  In 1893, when the last Home Rule Bill was being discussed, a Franco-Irish alliance was the fear.  Now it is the other way, and the Spectator has been writing solemn articles to warn its readers that Mr. Dillon, in a speech on foreign policy, has shown ominous signs of hostility to France.  In the election of January, 1910, an ex-Cabinet Minister informed the public that Home Rule meant the presence of a German fleet in Belfast Lough—­at whose invitation he did not explain, though he probably did not intend to insult Ulster.  This wild talk has not even the merit of a strategical foundation.  It belongs to another age.  Ireland has neither a fleet nor the will or money to build one.  Our fleet, in which large numbers of Irishmen serve, guarantees the security of New Zealand, and if it cannot maintain the command of home waters, including St. George’s Channel, our situation is desperate, whether Ireland is friendly or hostile.  We guarantee the independent existence of the kingdom of Belgium, which is as near as Ireland, with military liabilities vastly more serious than any which Ireland