course in a less
degree, in understanding and helping to settle the complex difficulty
called the Irish Question. The Irish remember Ireland long after they
have left it. They are not in the same position as the German or English
immigrants who have no cause at home which they wish to forward. Every
echo in the States of political or social disturbance in Ireland rouses
the immigrant and he becomes an Irishman once more, and not a citizen of
the country of his adoption. His views and votes on international
questions, in so far as they affect these Islands, are thus often
dictated more by a passionate sympathy for and remembrance of the land
he no longer lives in, than by any right understanding of the interests
of the new country in which he and his children must live.

The only reason why I have examined the assumption that Irishmen display
marked political capacity in the United States is to make it clear that
the political deficiencies they manifest at home are to be attributed
mainly to defects of character, and to a conception of politics for
which modern English government is very slightly responsible. I admit
that English government in the past had no small share in producing the
results we deplore to-day, but the motives and manner of its action
have, it seems to me, been very imperfectly understood.

The fact is that the difficulties of English government in Ireland,
until a complete military conquest had been effected, were of a
peculiarly complex character. Before the English could impose upon
Ireland their own political organisation--and the idea that any other
system could work better among the Irish never entered the English
mind--it was obviously necessary that the very antithesis of that
organisation, the clan system, should be abolished. But there were
military and financial objections to carrying out this policy. Irish
campaigns were very costly, and England was in those days by no means
wealthy. English armies in Ireland, after a short period spent in
desultory warfare with light armed kernes in the fever-stricken Munster
forests, began to melt away. For many generations, therefore, England,
adopting a policy of _divide et impera_, set clan against clan. Later
on, statecraft may be said to have supervened upon military tactics. It
consisted of attempts made by alternate threats and bribes to induce the
chiefs to transform the clan organisation by the acceptance of English
institutions. But any system