o admit that Irish Unionism has failed
to recognise its obligation--an obligation recognised by the Unionist
party in Great Britain--to supplement opposition to Home Rule with a
positive and progressive policy which could have been expected to
commend itself to the majority of the Irish people--the Irish of the
Irish Question.

To my own party in Ireland then, I would first direct the reader's
attention. I have already referred to the deplorable effects produced
upon national life by the exclusion of representatives of the landlord
and the industrial classes from positions of leadership and trust over
four-fifths of the country. I cannot conceive of a prosperous Ireland in
which the influence of these leaders is restricted within its present
bounds. It has been so restricted because the Irish Unionist party has
failed to produce a policy which could attract, at any rate, moderate
men from the other side, and we have, therefore, to consider why we have
so failed. Until this is done, we shall continue to share the blame for
the miserable state of our political life which, at the end of the
nineteenth century, appeared to have made but little advance from the
time when Bishop Berkeley asked 'Whether our parties are not a burlesque
upon politics.'

The Irish Unionist party is supposed to unite all who, like the author,
are opposed to the plunge into what is called Home Rule. But its
propagandist activities in Ireland are confined to preaching the
doctrine of the _status quo_, and preaching it only to its own side.
From the beginning the party has been intimately connected with the
landlord class; yet even upon the land question it has thrown but few
gleams of the constructive thought which that question so urgently
demanded, and which it might have been expected to apply to it. Now and
again an individual tries to broaden the basis of Irish Unionism and to
bring himself into touch with the life of the people. But the nearer he
gets to the people the farther he gets from the Irish Unionist leaders.
The lot of such an individual is not a happy one: he is regarded as a
mere intruder who does not know the rules of the game, and he is treated
by the leading players on both sides like a dog in a tennis court.

Two main causes appear to me to account for the failure of the Irish
Unionist party to make itself an effective force in Irish national life.
The great misunderstanding to which I have attributed the unhappy state
of Ang