d the Government as alien, disputed the
validity of its laws, and felt no responsibility for administration, no
respect for the legislature, or for those who executed its decrees. And
this in a country forming an integral part of the United Kingdom, where
the fundamental basis of government is assumed to be the consent of the
governed! Nor were any hopes entertained that the cloud would quickly
pass. During the Boer war the prophets of evil, in predicting the
calamity which was to fall upon the British Empire, took as their text
the failure of English government in Ireland. When they wanted to paint
in the darkest colours the coming heritage of woe, they wrote upon the
wall, 'Another Ireland in South Africa'; and if any exception was taken
to the appropriateness of the phrase, it was certainly not on the
ground that Ireland had ceased to be a warning to British statesmen.

I believe, quite as strongly as the most optimistic Englishman, that
there has been a great change from this state of things in Irish
sentiment, and my explanation of that change, if less dramatic than the
transformation theory, affords more solid ground for optimism. This
change in the sentiment of Irishmen towards England is due, not to a
sudden emotion of the incomprehensible Celt, but really to the
opinion--rapidly growing for the last dozen years--that great as is the
responsibility of England for the state of Ireland, still greater is the
responsibility of Irishmen. The conviction has been more and more borne
in upon the Irish mind that the most important part of the work of
regenerating Ireland must necessarily be done by Irishmen in Ireland.
The result has been that many Irishmen, both Unionists and Nationalists,
without in any way abandoning their opposition to, or support of, the
attempt to solve the political problem from without, have been
trying--not without success--to solve some part of the Irish Question
from within. The Report of the Recess Committee, on which I shall dwell
later, was the first great fruit of this movement, and the Dunraven
Treaty, which paved the way for Mr. Wyndham's Land Act, was a further
fruit, and not the result of an inexplicable transformation scene.

The reason why I dwell on the true nature of the undoubted change in
the Irish situation is not in order to exaggerate the importance of the
part played by the new movement in bringing it about, nor to detract
from the importance of Parliamentary action, but beca