One of the “strange things” which he did not see was the resolve of Ireland to be recognized as a nation; and that recognition was the “something” which, as I said just now, England was unable or unwilling to supply.  Late in life Gladstone discovered that Ireland was a nation, and ought to be treated as such.  As regards his own share in the matter, the change came too late, and he went to the grave leaving Ireland (in spite of two Home Rule Bills) still unpacified; but his influence has lived and wrought, not only in the Liberal party.  The principle of Irish nationality has been recognized in legislative form, and the most law-abiding citizen in Great Britain might drink that toast of “Ireland a Nation” which aforetime was considered seditious, if not treasonable.

It was certainly a very odd prejudice of English Philistinism which prevented us, for so many centuries, from recognizing a fact so palpable as Irish nationality.  If ever a race of men had characteristics of its own, marking it out from its nearest neighbours, that race is the Irish, and among the best of those characteristics are chastity, courtesy, hospitality, humour, and fine manners.  The intense Catholicism of Ireland may be difficult for Protestants to applaud; yet most certainly those who fail to take it into account are hopelessly handicapped in the attempt to deal with Irish problems.  The Irish are born fighters.  One of the most splendid passages which even Irish oratory ever produced was that in which Sheill protested against the insolence of stigmatizing the countrymen of Wellington as “aliens” from England, and no policy could be more suicidal than that which deflects the soldiership of Ireland from the British cause.

Charles James Fox shares with Edmund Burke the praise of having brought the ideas which we call Liberal to bear on Irish government, and his words are at least as true to-day as when they were written:  “We ought not to presume to legislate for a nation in whose feelings and affections, wants and interests, opinions and prejudices, we have no sympathy.”  Are “The Incompatibles” to be always incompatible, or can we now, even at the eleventh hour, make some effort to understand the working of the Irish temperament?

The incompatibility, as Matthew Arnold read it, is not between the two nations which Providence has so closely knit together, but between insolence, dulness, rigidity, on the one hand, and sensibility, quickness, flexibility, on the other.  What Arnold lamented was that England has too often been represented in Ireland, and here also when Irish questions were discussed, by “the genuine, unmitigated Murdstone—­the common middle-class Englishman, who has come forth from Salem House—­and Mr. Creakle.  He is seen in full force, of course, in the Protestant North; but throughout Ireland he is a prominent figure of the English garrison.  Him the Irish see, see him only too much and too often”—­and to see him is to dislike him, and the country which sent him forth.