the noble struggle of the American Abolitionists
against popular injustice, tell the same tale, namely, that law in the
United States has once and again failed to assert its due supremacy over
injustice backed by public approval. This melancholy failure may
possibly support the proposition that England cannot enforce the law in
Ireland. It far more conclusively shows that even in countries deeply
imbued with the spirit of legality self-government has no necessary
tendency to produce just government or just legislation.

Let us, however, examine with care the lessons to be drawn from the
treatment of the Southern States of America by the North.

The natural and most obvious moral of modern American history is that
the majority of a nation have both the right and power to coerce a
minority who claim to break up the unity of the State. The most
distinguished English Liberals, such as Bright and Mill, held, and as I
conceive on sound grounds of reason and justice, that the Southern
States were neither legally nor morally justified in their claim to
secede from the Union; but no fair-minded man can deny that a plausible
constitutional case could be made out in favour of Secession, nor that
the citizens of the Southern confederacy demonstrated their wish and
determination to secede by far more cogent evidence than the return of
eighty-six Secessionists to Congress. The prima facie arguments which
may be alleged in favour of Secession were tenfold stronger--unfounded
as I hold them to have been--than the prima facie arguments in favour of
Ireland's right to Home Rule. Moreover, in studying the history of the
United States, an Englishman is at the present moment more concerned
with the results than with the justification of the suppression of the
Southern rebellion. The policy of the North attained its object: the
Union was restored, and its existence is now placed beyond the reach of
peril. The abolition of slavery took away the source of disagreement
between the Northern and Southern States, and the tremendous exhibition
of the power of the Republic has finally, it is supposed, destroyed the
very idea of Secession. There is certainly nothing in all this which
discourages the attempt to maintain the political unity of Great Britain
and Ireland. We are told, however, to forget the force employed to
suppress Secession, and to recollect only the policy of the Republicans
after the close of the Civil War. That policy was a failure