England's Case Against Home Rule

and to herself, and Ireland will (it is argued) develop the sense of responsibility and the power of self-government. Mr. Par

ers, Dynamiters or Assassins will find that they are called upon to meet a force of which they have had before no experience. They will discover that they are engaged in a contest with the will of the people, and deprived, as they will be, of the mora

ion of an Irish Ministry at Dublin will be the dissolution of every secret society throughout Ireland,

olence and murder, have with success defied the law courts. Social conditions, and not the perversities of Irish character, are seen to be the true cause of phenomena which, if they are now a feature of Irish life, have appeared in countries where not an Irishman was to be found, and where the Irish had no appreciable influence. To this fact, which appears to me not to admit of question, Americans add the consideration that lawlessness when supported by public opinion has in America been successfully met, not by coercion, but by yielding to public sentiment. Hence they draw the conclusion that the proper mode of terminating the conflict between law and widespread sentiment is to yield to opinion, and, by conceding somethin

tic

ry the evils involved in the suppression of internal revolution by external force. This admission contains the main ground for the argument in favo

oncession that Ireland has suffered from not having be

most semi-independence-that is to say, it leaves Ireland at least half dependent upon England. It is vain to argue that the position of the member of

strong but just, and Englishmen must consider whether rulers who had come to the head of affairs solely because they represented the strongest among many Irish factions or parties would he able to rule with justice. The "Jacobin Conquest" installed a strong executive in power, but England could not be an accomplice in inaugurating a reign of terror. The connection which under any form of Home Rule would bind together the parts of th

an version of our argument g

came into play. The law was hated, not because it was "foreign," but because it enforced the obligation of an unpopular contract. Landlords, it is now all but admitted, are not entitled to the full rights of citizens. The triumph therefore of the anti-renters at New York may command a certain amount of sympathy. The popular sentiment which in 1833 induced the people of Connecticut to boycott Miss Prudence Crandall cannot be brought under the sanction of any "higher law." Her crime was that she chose, obeying the dictates of her conscience, to open a school for negro girls in Connecticut. She was subjected to every annoyance and insult which the most reckless boycotter could invent. Legislation itself was turned against her, and t

ssons to be drawn from the treatment of t

n must be read if they are to be interpreted in favour of Home Rule. The reading is a strained interpretation of events which are known to every one. The North, once and for all, settled that the matters which lay at the bottom of the Civil War should be settled in the manner which conform to Northern notions of justice and of expediency. The abolition of slavery, and the final disposal of the alleged right to Secession, gave to the North, all the requisite securities against attacks on the unity of the Republic. The Republicans, influenced in part by considerations of party, but partly (it must in fairness be admitted) by the feeling that it was a duty to secure for Negro citizens the full enjoyment of the civil and political rights given them, under the constitutional amendments supported for years the so-called Carpet Bag Governments, that is to say, the rule of Northern adventurers who were kept in office throughout the South by the Negro vote. The Federal Government, in short, up to 1876 gave by its arms authority in the South to the unscrupulosity of Northern scoundrelism supported by the votes of Negro ignorance. Such a policy naturally produced bitter irritation among the Southern Whites. Its reversal as naturally restored to the Whites at once power and contentment. Whether this reversal was as satisfactory to the Blacks is less clear. In any case it is hard to see how the restoration of the Southern States to their natural place in the Union tells in favour of giving Ireland a position quite inconsistent with the existing constitution of the United Kingdom. The case stands thus: Northern Republicans insisted that every State in the South should submit to the supremacy of the United States on every point which directly or indirectly concerned the national and political unity of the American people. Having secured this submission the Republican party restored to the Southern States the reality as well as the name of State rights; and allowed the same and no more than the same independence to South Carolina as is allowed to New York.

ich tells far more strongly in favour of Separation than of Home Rule, or else to be an argument which shows only th