with vice; a rich man may be a scoundrel, and a poor man may be an honour to the human race, but the world would be much worse constituted than it is, if the possession of a competence were not connected with honesty, energy, adherence to duty, and every other civic virtue.  When it is said or admitted by Gladstonians that the propertied classes of Ireland are against Home Rule we know what this means; it means that the energy of Ireland is against Home Rule, that the honesty of Ireland is against Home Rule, that the learning of Ireland is against Home Rule, that all that makes a nation great is against Home Rule, and that the Irishmen most entitled to our respect and honour implore us not to force upon them the curse of Home Rule.  This is no trifle.  Let us at any rate have done with phrases; let us admit that the satisfaction of Ireland means merely the satisfaction of a class, though it may be the most numerous class of Irishmen, and that it also means the bitter discontent of the one class of Irishmen who are specially loyal to Great Britain.  If we are closing one feud we are assuredly opening another feud which it may at least be as hard to heal.

But is it true that even the Home Rulers of Ireland are satisfied?  Their representatives indeed accept the new constitution.  Their acceptance may well, as far as intention goes, be honest.  Mr. Davitt, I dare say, when he sentimentalises in the House of Commons about his affection for the English democracy, is nearly, though not quite, as sincere as when he used to express passionate hatred of England.[99] But acquiescence is one thing, satisfaction is another.  There is every reason why the Irish members should acquiesce in the new constitution.  They obtain much, and they gain the means of getting more.  Quite possibly they feel grateful.  But their gratitude is not the gratitude of Ireland, and gratitude is hardly a sentiment possible, or indeed becoming, to a nation.

England saved Portugal and Spain from the domination of France.  Do we find that Portuguese and Spaniards gladly subordinate their interests to the welfare of England?  France delivered Italy from thraldom to Austria; French blood paid the price of Italian freedom.  Yet France is detested from one end of Italy to the other, whilst Italians rejoice in the alliance with Austria.  In all this there is nothing unreasonable and nothing to blame.  Policy is not sentimentality, and the relations of peoples cannot be regulated in the same manner as the relations of individuals.  Thirty, twenty, ten, five years hence all the sentiment of the year 1893 will have vanished.  Irish content and satisfaction must, if it is to exist at all, rest on a far more solid basis than the hopes, the words, the pledges, or the intentions of Mr. M’Carthy, Mr. Sexton, or Mr. Davitt.  Note that their satisfaction is even now of a limited kind.  It absolutely depends on the new constitution being worked exactly in the way which they desire.  The use of the veto,