nthusiasm for the Home
Rule Bill, desire the new constitution as ardently as sixty years or so
ago our fathers desired parliamentary reform. Yet even on this
assumption the belief in Home Rule as a panacea for Irish ills is
childish, and belongs to a bygone stage of opinion. We now know that
changes in political machinery, however important, do not of themselves
produce content. A poverty-stricken peasant in Connaught will not be
made happy because a Parliament meets at Dublin. We now further know
that the difficulty of satisfying popular aspirations often arises from
the fundamental faults of human nature. Trust in the people may often be
wiser than distrust, but to suppose that masses of men are wiser, more
reasonable, or more virtuous than the individuals of which they consist,
is as idle a political delusion as the corresponding ecclesiastical
delusion that a church has virtues denied to the believers who make up
the church. On this point an anecdote makes my meaning clearer than an
argument. On May 15, 1848, the French National Assembly was invaded by
an armed mob, who shouted and yelled for three hours and more, and
threatened at any moment to slaughter the representatives of France.
From June 22-26, 1848, there raged the most terrible of the
insurrections which Paris has seen. For the first time in modern history
the workmen of the capital rose against the body of the more or less
well-to-do citizens. There was not a man in Paris who did not tremble
for his property and his life. Householders feared the very servants in
their homes. Between these days of ferocity intervened a day of
sentiment. On May 21, 1848, the Assembly attended a Feast of Concord.
There were carts filled with allegorical figures, there were
processions, there were embraces; the whole town, soldiers, national
guards, gardes mobiles, armed workmen, a million of men or more, passed
in array before the deputies. The feast was a feast of concord, but
every deputy had provided himself with pistols or some weapon of
defence. This was the occasion when we are told by the reporter of the
scene, 'Carnot said to me with a touch of that silliness (_niaiserie_)
which is always to be found mixed up with the virtues of honest
democrats, "Believe me, my dear colleague, you must always trust the
people." I remember I answered him rather rudely, "Ah! why didn't you
remind me of that on the day before May 15?"' The anecdote is told by
the greatest political thin