s, and especially under the system of popular
government, institutions derive their life, and laws their constraining
power, not from the will of the law-giver, or from the strength of the
army, but from their correspondence with the permanent wishes and habits
of the people. Home Rule, to put this matter in its strongest form,
means, it may be said, the application to Ireland of the very principle
on which the English constitution rests--that a people must be ruled in
accordance with their own permanent ideas of right and of justice, and
that unless this be done, law, because it commands no loyalty, ensures
no obedience. The whole history of the connection between the two
islands which make up the United Kingdom is a warning of the
wretchedness, the calamities, the wickedness and the ruin which follow
upon the attempt to violate this fundamental principle not only of
popular, but of all good and just government. Home Rule may appear to be
an innovation. It is in this point of view simply a return to the
essential ideas of English constitutionalism, it is an attempt to escape
from the false path which has been pursued for centuries, and to return
to the broad highway of government in accordance with popular sympathy.
At this point, however, the argument from the will of the people merges
in the much stronger and more serious train of reasoning derived from
the teaching of history.

[Sidenote: 3. Argument from Irish history.]

_The argument from Irish history._--Appeals to the lessons of the past
are at times in the mouths of Home Rulers, as also of their opponents, a
noxious revival of ancient passions, or (it may be) nothing better than
the use of an unreal form of rhetoric; yet a supporter of Home Rule may
use the argument from Irish history in a way which is at once legitimate
and telling.

On one point alone (it may be urged) all men of whatever party, or of
whatever nation, who have seriously studied the annals of Ireland are
agreed--the history of the country is a record of incessant failure on
the part of the Government, and of incessant misery on the part of the
people. On this matter, if on no other, De Beaumont, Froude and Lecky
are at one. As to the guilt of the failure or the cause of the misery,
men may and do differ; that England, whether from her own fault or from
the fault of the Irish people, or from the perversity of circumstances,
has failed in Ireland of achieving the elementary results of good
go