attempt, lavishly financed and directed by masters of the art of defamation, will be made to blacken Ireland.  Every newspaper in every remotest country-town in England will be deluged with syndicated venom.  The shop-keeper will wrap up his parcels in Orange posters, and the working-man will, I hope, light his pipe for years to come with pamphlets of the same clamant colour.  Irishmen, or at all events persons born in Ireland, will be found to testify that they belong to a barbarous people which has never ceased from barbarism, and that they are not fit to govern themselves.  Politicians who were never known to risk a five-pound note in helping to develop Ireland will toss down their fifties to help to defame her.  Such is the outlook.  Against this campaign of malice, hatred, and all uncharitableness it is the duty of every good citizen to say his word, and in the following pages I say mine.  This little book is not a compendium of facts, and so does not trench on the province of Mr Stephen Gwynn M.P.’s admirable “Case for Home Rule.”  It does not discuss the details, financial or otherwise, of a statesmanlike settlement.  Such suggestions as I had to make I have already made in “Home Rule Finance,” and the reader will find much ampler treatment of the whole subject in “The Framework of Home Rule,” by Mr Erskine Childers, and “Home Rule Problems,” edited by Mr Basil Williams.  In general, my aim has been to aid in humanising the Irish Question.  The interpretation of various aspects of it, here offered, is intended to be not exhaustive but provocative, a mere set of shorthand rubrics any one of which might have been expanded into a chapter.  Addressing the English reader with complete candour, I have attempted to recommend to him that method of approach, that mental attitude which alone can divest him of his preconceptions, and put him in rapport with the true spirit of the Ireland of actuality.  To that end the various lines of discussion converge:—­

Chapter I is an outline of the pathology of the English mind in Ireland.

Chapters II and III present the history of Ireland as the epic, not of a futile and defeated, but of an indomitable and victorious people.

Chapter IV exhibits the Home Rule idea as a fundamental law of nature, human nature, and government.

Chapters V and VI contain a very brief account of the more obvious economic crimes and blunders of Unionism.

Chapter vii discusses the queer ideas of “Ulster,” and the queer reasons for the survival of these ideas.

Chapter VIII demonstrates that, as a mere matter of political technique, Home Rule must be conceded if any real government is ever to exist again, whether in Great Britain, in Ireland, or in the Empire.

Chapter IX dips into the future, and indicates that a Home Rule Ireland will have so much interesting work to do as to have no time for civil war or religious oppression.

Chapter X shows that everybody who values “loyalty” must of necessity be a Home Ruler.