and by just legislation, remove the source of
Irish opposition to the law? Answer the question affirmatively, and the
outcry against coercion becomes unmeaning; answer the question
negatively, and you produce an argument which tells with crushing power
in favour not of Home Rule, but of Separation.

[Sidenote: 6. The argument from inconvenience.]

_The argument from the inconvenience to England._[27]--Apologies for
Home Rule drawn from foreign experience, deference due to the popular
will, from the historical failure of England to govern Ireland with
success and the like, have about them when employed by English members
of Parliament a touch of unreality; they are reasons meant to satisfy
the hearer, but do not convince the speaker. When however we come to the
argument for Home Rule drawn from the inconvenience of the present state
of things to England generally, and to English members of Parliament in
particular, we know at once that we are at any rate dealing with a real
tangible serious plea which has (if anything) only too much weight with
the person who employs it. There is nothing in the whole relation of
England to Ireland about which politicians are so well assured, as that
the presence of a body of Parnellites at Westminster is an unutterable
nuisance, and works intolerable evil. Of the reality of their conviction
we have the strongest proof. The sufferings of Irish tenants, the
difficulties or the wrongs of Irish landlords, the evils of coercion,
the terror of assassination, but slightly ruffled the composure with
which English statesmen faced the perplexities of the Irish problem.
They first began to think that the demand for Home Rule might have
something in it when the refusal to erect a Parliament at Dublin meant
the continuance of obstruction in the Parliament at Westminster. The
terror of obstruction has to speak the plain truth, done more to effect
the _bona fide_ conversion of English M.P.'s into advocates of Home Rule
than any other single influence.

What then is the harm which a body of eighty or ninety Irish members can
work in Parliament? This is the answer. They may (it is said) in the
first place delay, obstruct, and render impossible the carrying through
of important measures; London may go without a municipality; widowers
may wait for years without being able to marry their deceased wives'
sisters; we may not during this generation get the blessing of a good
criminal code, if Mr. Parnell and