sense of their own feebleness. They will be constitutionally and
legally entitled to the support of the British army; they will
constitute the worst form of government of which the world has had
experience, a government which relying for its existence on the aid of
an external power finds in its very feebleness support for tyranny.
Murmurs are already heard of armed resistance. These mutterings, we are
told, are nothing but bluster. It is at any rate that sort of "bluster"
at which the justice and humanity of a loyal Englishman must take alarm.
I have not yet learnt to look without horror on the possibility of civil
war, nor to picture to myself without emotion the situation of brave men
compelled by the British army to obey rulers whose moral claim to
allegiance they justly deny and whose power unaided by British arms they
contemn. Civil warfare created by English policy and despotism
maintained by English arms must surely be to any Englishman objects of
equal abhorrence.

But in England no less than in Ireland our new constitution gives
artificial power to weakness. At Westminster the Irish members, be they
80 or 103, will have no legitimate place. Mr. Gladstone on this point
is, for aught I know, at one with the Unionists. In 1886 he without
scruple, and therefore no doubt without any sense of injustice, expelled
the representatives of Ireland from the British Parliament. In 1893 he
brings them back to Westminster. But his words betray his hesitation. He
expects, may we not say he hopes, that they will remain in Ireland and
on their occasional visits to London have the good sense and good taste
not to interfere in British affairs. Few are the persons who share these
anticipations. If they are to be realised they must be embodied in the
constitution; the Premier might at this moment without shame, and
without regret, revert to the better policy of 1886. On his present
policy we all know that his expectations will not be fulfilled. The
voluntary absence of the Irish members from Westminster is as vain a
dream as the fancy that Ireland under Home Rule may suffer from a
plethora of money. To Westminster the Irish members will come. If they
do not come of their own accord they will be fetched by allies who need
their help. At Westminster they will hold the balance of parties, and
will while the constitution lasts rule the destiny of England with a
sole regard at best to the immediate interest of Ireland, at worst to
the i