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No Home Ruler has described the evils of English misrule in Ireland with such vigour as this.

“Bad administration, religious persecution, above all, a thoroughly vicious land tenure, accompanied by such sweeping confiscations as to make it, at any rate, a plausible assertion that all land in Ireland has during the course of Irish history been confiscated at least thrice over, are admittedly some of the causes, if they do not constitute the whole cause, of the one immediate difficulty which perplexes the policy of England. This is nothing else than the admitted disaffection to the law of the land prevailing among large numbers of Irish people. The existence of this disaffection, whatever be the inference to be drawn from it, is undeniable. A series of so-called Coercion Acts, passed both before and since the Act of Union, give undeniable evidence, if evidence were wanted, of the ceaseless and, as it would appear, almost irrepressible resistance in Ireland offered by the people to the enforcement of the law. I have not the remotest inclination to underrate the lasting and formidable character of this opposition between opinion and law, nor can any jurist who wishes to deal seriously with a serious and infinitely painful topic, question for a moment that the ultimate strength of law lies in the sympathy, or at the lowest the acquiescence, of the mass of the population. Judges, constables, and troops become almost powerless when the conscience of the people permanently opposes the execution of the law. Severity produces either no effect or bad effects; executed criminals are regarded as heroes or martyrs; and jurymen and witnesses meet with the execration and often with the fate of criminals. On such a point it is best to take the opinion of a foreigner unaffected by prejudices or passions from which no Englishman or Irishman has a right to suppose himself free.

“‘Quand vous en etes arroes a ce point, croyez bien que dans cette voie de regueurs tous vos efforts pour retabler l’ordre et la paix seront inutiles. En vain, pour reprimer des crimes atroces, vous appellerez a votre aide toutes les severites du code de Dracon; en vain vous ferez des lois cruelles pour arreter le cours de revoltantes cruautes; vainement vous frapperez de mort le moindre delit se rattachant a ces grands crimes; vainement, dans l’effroi de votre impuissance, vous suspendrez le cours des lois ordinaries proclamerez des comtes entiers en etat de suspicion legale, voilerez le principe de la liberte individuelle, creerez des cours martiales, des commissions extraordinaires, et pour produire de salutaires impressions de terreur, multiplierez a l’exces les executions capitales.'”[55]

The next passage is a trenchant condemnation of the “Union.”

“There exists in Europe no country so completely at unity with itself as Great Britain. Fifty years of reform have done their work, and have removed the discontents, the divisions, the disaffection, and the conspiracies which marked the first quarter, or the first half of this century. Great Britain, if left to herself, could act with all the force, consistency, and energy given by unity of sentiment and community of interests. The distraction and the uncertainty of our political aims, the feebleness and inconsistency with which they are pursued, arise, in part at least, from the connection with Ireland. Neither Englishmen nor Irishmen are to blame for the fact that it is difficult for communities differing in historical associations and in political conceptions to keep step together in the path of progress. For other evils arising from the connection the blame must rest on English Statesmen. All the inherent vices of party government, all the weaknesses of the parliamentary system, all the evils arising from the perverse notion that reform ought always to be preceded by a period of lengthy and more than half factitious agitation met by equally factitious resistance, have been fostered and increased by the interaction of Irish and English politics. No one can believe that the inveterate habit of ruling one part of the United Kingdom on principles which no one would venture to apply to the government of any other part of it, can have produced anything but the most injurious effect on the stability of our Government and the character of our public men. The advocates of Home Rule find by far their strongest arguments for influencing English opinion, in the proofs which they produce that England, no less than Ireland, has suffered from a political arrangement under which legal union has failed to secure moral union. These arguments, whatever their strength, are, however, it must be noted, more available to a Nationalist than to an advocate of federalism.”[56]