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If experience is decisive against the policy of the past, experience too, all over the modern world, indicates the better direction for the future. I will not use my too scanty space in repeating any of the great wise commonplaces in praise of self-government. Here they are superfluous. In the case of Ireland they have all been abundantly admitted in a long series of measures, from Catholic Emancipation down to Lord O’Hagan’s Jury Law and the Franchise and Redistribution Acts of a couple of years ago. The principle of self-government has been accepted, ratified, and extended in a hundred ways. It is only a question of the form that self-government shall take. Against the form proposed by the late Ministry a case is built up that rests on a series of prophetic assumptions. These assumptions, from the nature of the case, can only be met by a counter-statement of fair and reasonable probabilities. Let us enumerate some of them.

1. It is inferred that, because the Irish leaders have used violent language and resorted to objectionable expedients against England during the last six years, they would continue in the same frame of mind after the reasons for it had disappeared. In other words, because they have been the enemies of a Government which refused to listen to a constitutional demand, therefore they would continue to be its enemies after the demand had been listened to. On this reasoning, the effect is to last indefinitely and perpetually, notwithstanding the cessation of the cause. Our position is that all the reasonable probabilities of human conduct point the other way. The surest way of justifying violent language and fostering treasonable designs, is to refuse to listen to the constitutional demand.

2. The Irish, we are told, hate the English with an irreconcilable hatred, and would unquestionably use any Constitution as an instrument for satisfying their master passion. Irrational hatred, they say, can be treated by rational men with composure. The Czechs of Bohemia are said to be irreconcilable, yet the South Germans bear with their hatred; and if we cannot cure we might endure the antipathy of Ireland. Now, as for the illustration, I may remark that the hatred of the Czechs would be much too formidable for German composure, if the Czechs did not happen to possess a provincial charter and a special constitution of their own. If the Irish had the same, their national dislike–so far as it exists–might be expected to become as bearable as the Germans have found the feeling of the Czechs. But how deep does Irish dislike go? Is it directed against Englishmen, or against an English official system? The answers of every impartial observer to the whole group of such questions as these favour the conclusion that the imputed hatred of England in Ireland has been enormously exaggerated and overcoloured by Ascendency politicians for good reasons of their own; that with the great majority of Irishmen it has no deep roots; that it is not one of those passionate international animosities that blind men to their own interests, or lead them to sacrifice themselves for the sake of injuring their foe; and, finally, that it would not survive the amendment of the system that has given it birth.[2]

3. It is assumed that there is a universal desire for Separation. That there is a strong sentiment of nationality we of course admit; it is part of the case, and not the worst part. But the sentiment of nationality is a totally different thing from a desire for Separation. Scotland might teach our pseudo-Unionists so much as that. Nowhere in the world is the sentiment of nationality stronger, yet there is not a whisper of Separation. That there is a section of Irishmen who desire Separation is notorious, but everything that has happened since the Government of Ireland Bill was introduced, including the remarkable declarations of Mr. Parnell in accepting the Bill (June 7), and including the proceedings at Chicago, shows that the separatist section is a very small one either in Ireland or in America, and that it has become sensibly smaller since, and in consequence of, the proposed concession of a limited statutory constitution. The Irish are quite shrewd enough to know that Separation, if it were attainable–and they are well aware that it is not–would do no good to their markets; and to that knowledge, as well as to many other internal considerations, we may confidently look for the victory of strong centripetal over very weak centrifugal tendencies. Even if we suppose these centrifugal tendencies to be stronger than I would allow them to be, how shall we best resist them–by strengthening the hands and using the services of the party which, though nationalist, is also constitutional; or by driving that party also, in despair of a constitutional solution, to swell the ranks of Extremists and Irreconcilables?