really eliminated. But it is in the
circumstances not unnatural that most of us should fall into the error
of attributing to the influence of prominent individuals or
organisations the events and conditions which the superficial observer
regards as the creation of the hour, but which are in reality the
outcome of a slow and continuous process of evolution. I remember as a
boy being captivated by that charming corrective to this view of
historical development, Buckle's _History of Civilization_, which in
recent years has often recurred to my mind, despite the fact that many
of his theories are now somewhat discredited. Buckle, if I remember
right, almost eliminates the personal factor in the life of nations.
According to his theory, it would not have made much difference to
modern civilisation if Napoleon had happened, as was so near being the
case, to be born a British instead of a French subject. It would also
have followed that if O'Connell had limited his activities to his
professional work, or if Parnell had chanced to hate Ireland as bitterly
as he hated England, we should have been, politically, very much where
we are to-day. The student of Irish affairs should, of course, avoid the
extreme views of historical causation; but in the search for the truth
he will, I think, be well advised to attach less significance to the
influence of prominent personality than is the practice of the ordinary
observer in Ireland.

The warning I have to offer, I think, will be justified by a reflection
upon the history of the panaceas which we have been offered, and upon
our present state. To those of my British readers who honestly desire to
understand the Irish Question, I would say, let them eschew the sweeping
generalisations by which Irish intelligence is commonly outraged. I may
pass by the explanation which rests upon the cheap attribution of racial
inferiority with the simple reply that our inferior race has much of the
superior blood in its veins; yet the Irish problem is just as acute in
districts where the English blood predominates as where the people are
'mere Irish.' If this view be disputed, the matter is not worth arguing
about, because we cannot be born again. But there are three other common
explanations of the Irish difficulty, any one of which taken by itself
only leads away from the truth. I refer, I need hardly say, to the
familiar assertions that the origin of the evil is political, that it is
religious, or th