Still, it is unfortunately true that the great bulk of the landlords and ex-landlords stand aloof from the Home Rule movement.  The collateral result is that far too many of them instinctively stand aloof even from those purely economic and intellectual movements which tend to make a living united Ireland out of chaos.  The national loss is heavy; the waste of talent and of driving-power, for Ireland needs driving-power from her leisured and cultured classes, is melancholy to contemplate.

Everywhere one sees waste of talent in Ireland.  The land abounds in men with ideas and potentialities waiting for those normal chances of development which self-governed countries provide.  Much of this good material is crushed under unnatural political tyrannies caused by ceaseless agitation for and against an abstract aim which should have been satisfied long ago, so that the energies it absorbed might have been diverted into practical channels.  There is too much moral cowardice, too little bold, independent thought and action.  Nobody knows what Ireland really is, and of what she is capable.  Nobody can know until she has responsibility for her own fate.

Local government, where popular opinion is nominally free, suffers from the absence of free central government.  Is it not on the face of it preposterous to give complete powers of local taxation and administration to a country while withholding from it, as unsafe and improper, central co-ordinating control?  For any country but Ireland—­at any rate, in the British self-governing Colonies and the United States—­such a policy would be regarded as crazy.  Still more unreasonable is it to complain that local authorities under such a system spend part of the energy which should be devoted wholly to local affairs in abstract politics.  I forbear from engaging in the statistical war over the numbers of Catholics and Protestants employed and elected by local bodies.  One must remember, what Unionists sometimes forget, that Ireland is, broadly speaking, a Roman Catholic country, and that until thirteen years ago local administration and patronage were almost exclusively in Protestant hands.  We should naturally expect a marked change; but, with that reminder, I prefer to appeal to the reader’s common sense.  Deny national Home Rule, and give local Home Rule.  What would one expect to happen?  What would have happened in any Colony?  What would Mr. Arthur Balfour himself have prophesied with certainty in the case of any other country but Ireland?  Why, this, that each little local body would become an outlet for suppressed agitation, and that national or anti-national politics, not urgent local necessities, would enter into local elections and influence the composition of local bodies.  And what would be the further consequence?  That numbers of the best local men would stand aloof or be rejected, and that favouritism would find a congenial soil.