That is certain; one cannot live in Ireland with one’s eyes and ears open without realizing it.  All social and economic effort, successful as it is up to a certain point, and strong as its tendency is to promote nationalist feeling of the noblest kind, has to struggle desperately against the benumbing influence of abstract “politics.”  Suspicion comes from both sides.  Both Unionists and Nationalists, for example, at one time or another have looked askance on the Co-operative movement and on the Department of Agriculture as being too Nationalist or too Unionist in tendency.  Unionists caused Sir Horace Plunkett to lose his seat in Parliament in 1905; and Nationalists, though with some constitutional justification, secured his removal from office in 1907.  At this moment there is friction and suspicion in this particular matter which seems to the impartial observer to be artificial, and which would not exist, or would be transmuted into something perfectly harmless, and probably highly beneficial, were there any normal political life in Ireland and a central organ of public opinion.  As long as Great Britain insists, to her own infinite inconvenience, upon deciding Irish questions by party majorities fluctuating from Toryism to Radicalism, and thereby compels Ireland to send parties to Westminster whose raison d’etre is, not to represent crystallized Irish opinion on Irish domestic questions—­that is at present wholly impossible—­but to assert or deny the fundamental right for Ireland to settle her own domestic questions, so long will these dislocations continue, to the grave prejudice of Ireland and the deep discredit of Great Britain.  Ireland, like Canada in 1838, has no organic national life.  Apart from the abstract but paramount question of Home Rule, there are no formed political principles or parties.  Such parties as there are have no relation to the economic life of the country, and all interests suffer daily in consequence.  In a normal country you would find urban and agricultural interests distinctly represented, but not in Ireland.  We should expect to rind clear-cut opinions on Tariff Reform and Free Trade.  No such opinions exist.  On the other hand, agreement on important industrial and agricultural questions finds not the smallest reflection in Parliamentary representation.  Education, and other latent issues of burning importance, are not political issues.  A Budget may cause almost universal dissatisfaction, but it goes through, and the amazing thing is that Unionists complain of its going through!  Most of the Parliamentary elections are uncontested, though everybody knows that a dozen questions would set up a salutary ferment of opinion if they were not stifled by the refusal of Home Rule.  The Protestant tenant-farmers of Ulster have identical interests with those of other Provinces, and have profited largely by the legislation extorted by Nationalists; but for the most part, though by no means wholly, they vote Unionist.  The two great towns, Dublin