ed approbation of those cries, we shall see how they illumine the
councils of a governing people. They are wiser than the barking dogs.
Cromwell and Bismarck are great names; but the harrying of Ireland did
not settle it, and to Germanize a Posen and call it peace will find echo
only in the German tongue. Posen is the error of a master-mind too much
given to hammer at obstacles. He has, however, the hammer. Can it be
imagined in English hands? The braver exemplar for grappling with
monstrous political tasks is Cavour, and he would not have hinted at the
iron method or the bayonet for a pacification. Cavour challenged debate;
he had faith in the active intellect, and that is the thing to be prayed
for by statesmen who would register permanent successes. The Irish, it is
true, do not conduct an argument coolly. Mr. Parnell and his eighty-five
have not met the Conservative leader and his following in the Commons
with the gravity of platonic disputants. But they have a logical
position, equivalent to the best of arguments. They are representatives,
they would say, of a country admittedly ill-governed by us; and they have
accepted the Bill of the defeated Minister as final. Its provisions are
their terms of peace. They offer in return for that boon to take the
burden we have groaned under off our hands. If we answer that we think
them insincere, we accuse these thrice accredited representatives of the
Irish people of being hypocrites and crafty conspirators; and numbers in
England, affected by the weapons they have used to get to their present
strength, do think it; forgetful that our obtuseness to their constant
appeals forced them into the extremer shifts of agitation. Yet it will
hardly be denied that these men love Ireland; and they have not shown
themselves by their acts to be insane. To suppose them conspiring for
separation indicates a suspicion that they have neither hearts nor heads.
For Ireland, separation is immediate ruin. It would prove a very short
sail for these conspirators before the ship went down. The vital
necessity of the Union for both, countries, obviously for the weaker of
the two, is known to them; and unless we resume our exasperation of the
wild fellow the Celt can be made by such a process, we have not rational
grounds for treating him, or treating with him, as a Bedlamite. He has
besides his passions shrewd sense; and his passions may be rightly
directed by benevolent attraction. This is language de