The people must be told, as they may be told with absolute truth, that the fate of England is in question, and that nothing but the efforts of every Unionist throughout the land can save the country from destruction.  The contest has, without either party being aware of the change, shifted its character since 1886.  Then the names of Unionists and Separatists expressed the whole difference between the opponents and supporters of the Home Rule Bill.  The Gladstonians for the most part meant the Bill to affect, as far as possible, the condition of Ireland alone.  They did not mean to change the constitution of the United Kingdom.  It is now plain, as has been shown throughout these pages, that the measure of so-called Home Rule is a new constitution for the whole United Kingdom.  In 1886 the Gladstonians bona fide intended to close the period of agitation.  In 1893 many Gladstonians see in Home Rule for Ireland only the first step towards an extended scheme of federalism.  In 1886 no Gladstonian had palliated crime or oppression, no Gladstonian statesman had discovered that boycotting was nothing but exclusive dealing, no Gladstonian Chancellor had made light of conspiracy.  All this is changed.  Alliance with revolutionists or conspirators has imbued respectable English statesmen with revolutionary doctrines and revolutionary sentiment.  The difference between Unionist and Separatist remains, but it is merged in the wider difference between Constitutionalists and Revolutionists.  The question at issue is not merely, though this is serious enough, whether the Act of Union shall be repealed or relaxed, but whether the United Kingdom is morally a nation, and whether as a nation it has a right to insist upon the supreme authority belonging to the majority of its citizens.  A similar question was some thirty-two years ago put to the people of the United States; it was decided by the arbitrament of battle.

The terrible calamity of an appeal to the test of force Englishmen may avoid, but if it is to be avoided the national rights of the whole people of the United Kingdom must be asserted as strenuously by their votes as the rights of the citizens of the United States were vindicated by their arms.  The people of England again must be solemnly warned that errors in policy or acts of injustice may snatch from us the power of determining a political controversy at the ballot-box instead of on the battle-field.  It is folly to raise cases on the constitution; it is always of the most doubtful prudence to handle the casuistry of politics.  Nothing will tempt me to discuss in these pages what are the ethical limits to the exercise of constitutionally unlimited sovereignty, or at what point legal oppression justifies armed resistance.  Two considerations must at this crisis be kept in mind.  The one is that, until oppression is actually committed, the maintenance of order is the duty of every citizen, and, like most political duties, is also a matter of the most obvious expediency;