But these may be dismissed as constitutional pedantries.  So be it.  The Whigs, who made the Constitution, may be pardoned if they have a sneaking regard for their handiwork.  Much more astonishing is the fact that no resistance was offered on behalf of wealth and privilege by the classes who have most of both to lose.  The men of L100,000 a year—­not numerous, according to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but influential—­have been as meekly acquiescent as clerks or curates.  Men who own half a county have smiled on an Act which will destroy territorial domination.  What is the explanation?  Was their silence due to patriotism or to fear?  Did they laudably decline the responsibility of opposing a Government which is conducting a great war?  Or did they, less laudably, shrink from the prospect of appearing as the inveterate enemies of a social and economic revolution which they saw to be inevitable?  Let us charitably incline to the former hypothesis.

But there is something about this, our most recent revolution, which is even more astonishing than the absence of opposition and panic.  It is that no one, whether friend or foe, has paid the least attention to the subject.  In ordinary society it has been impossible to turn the conversation that way.  Any topic in the world—­but pre-eminently Rations,—­seemed more vital and more pressing.  “The Reform Bill?  What Bill is that?  Tell me, do you find it very difficult to get sugar?” “The Speaker’s Conference?  Haven’t heard about it.  I’m sure James Lowther won’t allow them to do anything very silly—­but I really cannot imagine how we are to get on without meat.”  Or yet again:  A triumphant Suffragist said to a Belgravian sister:  “So we’ve got the vote at last!” “What vote?” replied the sister.  “Surely we’ve had a vote for ever so long?  I’m sure I have, though I never used it.”

When the real history of this wonderful war is written, methinks the historian will reckon among its most amazing features the fact that it so absorbed the mind of the nation as to make possible a ‘silent revolution.’

VI

“THE INCOMPATIBLES”

My title is borrowed from one of the few Englishmen who have ever written wisely about Ireland.  Our ways of trying to pacify our Sister Kingdom have been many and various—­Disestablishment Acts, Land Acts, Arrears Acts, Coercion Acts, Crimes Acts, and every other variety of legislative experiment; but through them all Ireland remained unpacified.  She showed no gratitude for boons which she had not asked, and seemed to crave for something which, with the best intentions in the world, England was unable to supply.  This failure on the part of England may have been due to the fact that Gladstone, who, of all English statesmen, most concerned himself with Irish affairs, knew nothing of Ireland by personal contact.  It is startling to read, in Lord Morley’s Life this casual record of his former chief:  “In October, 1878, Gladstone paid his first and only visit to Ireland.  It lasted little more than three weeks, and did not extend beyond a very decidedly English pale....  Of the multitude of strange things distinctly Irish, he had little chance of seeing much.”