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Well may this distinguished “Supporter of things as they are” declare: “The maintenance of the Union [on such terms] must necessarily turn out as severe a task as ever taxed a nation’s energies; for to maintain the Union with any good effect, means that, while refusing to accede to the wishes of millions of Irishmen, we must sedulously do justice to every fair demand from Ireland; must strenuously, and without fear or favour, assert the equal rights of landlords and tenants, of Protestants and Catholics; and must, at the same time, put down every outrage and reform every abuse.”

What hope is there of this? Our only guide to the probabilities of the future is our experience of the past And what has that been in Ireland? In every year since the Legislative Union there have been multitudes of men in England as upright, as enlightened, as well-intentioned towards Ireland, as Professor Dicey, and with better opportunities of translating their thoughts into acts. Yet what has been the result? Si monumenlum requiris circumspice. Behold Ireland at this moment, and examine every year of its history since the Union. Do the annals of any constitutional Government in the world present so portentous a monument of Parliamentary failure, so vivid an example of a moral and material ruin “paved with good intentions”? Therein lies the pathos of it. Not from malice, not from cruelty, not from wanton injustice, not even from callous indifference to suffering and wrong, does our misgovernment of Ireland come. If the evil had its root in deliberate wrong-doing on the part of England it would probably have been cured long ago. But each generation, while freely confessing the sins of its fathers, has protested its own innocence and boasted of its own achievements, and then, with a pharisaic sense of rectitude, has complacently pointed to some inscrutable flaw in the Irish character as the key to the Irish problem. The generation which passed the Act of Union, oblivious of British pledges solemnly given and lightly broken, wondered what had become of the prosperity and contentment which the promoters of the Union had promised to Ireland. The next generation made vicarious penance, and preferred the enactment of Catholic emancipation to the alternative of civil war; and then wondered in its turn that Ireland still remained unpacified. Then came a terrible famine, followed by evictions on a scale so vast and cruel that the late Sir Robert Peel declared that no parallel could be found for such a tale of inhumanity in “the records of any country, civilized or barbarous.” Another generation, pluming itself on its enlightened views and kind intentions, passed the Encumbered Estates Act, which delivered the Irish tenants over to the tender mercies of speculators and money-lenders; and then Parliament for a time closed its eyes and ears, and relied upon force alone to keep Ireland quiet. It rejected every suggestion of reform in the Land laws; and a great Minister, himself an Irish landlord, dismissed the whole subject in the flippant epigram that “tenant-right was landlord-wrong.” Since then the Irish Church has been disestablished, and two Land Acts have been passed; yet we seem to be as far as ever from the pacification of Ireland. Surely it is time to inquire whether the evil is not inherent in our system of governing Ireland, and whether there is any other cure than that which De Beaumont suggested, namely, the destruction of the system. It is probable that there is not in all London a more humane or a more kind-hearted man than Lord Salisbury. Yet Lord Salisbury’s Government will do some harsh and inequitable things in Ireland this winter, just as Liberal Governments have done during their term of office. The fault is not in the men, but in the system which they have to administer. I see no reason to doubt that Sir M. Hicks-Beach did the best he could under the circumstances; but, unfortunately, bad is the best. In a conversation which I had with Dr. Doellinger while he was in full communion with his Church, I ventured to ask him whether he thought that a new Pope, of Liberal ideas, force of character, and commanding ability, would make any great difference in the Papal system. “No,” he replied, “the Curial system is the growth of centuries, and there can be no change of any consequence while it lasts. Many a Pope has begun with brave projects of reform; but the struggle has been brief, and the end has been invariably the same: the Pope has been forced to succumb. His entourage has been too much for him. He has found himself enclosed in a system which was too strong for him, wheel within wheel; and while the system lasts the most enlightened ideas and the best intentions are in the long run unavailing.” This criticism applies, mutatis mutandis, to what may be called the Curial system of Dublin Castle. It is a species of political Ultramontanism, exercising supreme power behind the screen of an official infallibility on which there is practically no check, since Parliament has never hitherto refused to grant it any power which it demanded for enforcing its decrees.