al capacities of a high
order. They have literary gifts and an artistic sense. Yet, with a few
brilliant exceptions, they contribute nothing to invention and create
nothing in literature or in art. One would say that there must be
something wrong with the education of the country; and most people
declare that it is too literary, though the Census returns show that
there are still large numbers who escape the tyranny of books. The
people have an extraordinary belief in political remedies for economic
ills; and their political leaders, who are not as a rule themselves
actively engaged in business life, tell the people, pointing to ruined
mills and unused water power, that the country once had diversified
industries, and that if they were allowed to apply their panacea,
Ireland would quickly rebuild her industrial life. If our hypothetical
traveller were to ask whether there are no other leaders in the country
besides the eloquent gentlemen who proclaim her helplessness, he would
be told that among the professional classes, the landlords, and the
captains of industry, are to be found as competent popular advisers as
are possessed by any other country of similar economic standing. But
these men take only a dilettante part in politics, and no value is set
on industrial, commercial or professional success in the choice of
public men. Can it be that to the Irish mind politics are, what Bulwer
Lytton declared love to be, "the business of the idle, and the idleness
of the busy"?

These, though only a few of the strange ironies of Irish life, are so
paradoxical and so anomalous that they are not unnaturally attributed to
the intrusion of an alien and unfriendly power; and this furnishes the
reason why everything which goes wrong is used to nourish the
anti-English sentiment. At the same time they give emphasis to the
growing doubt as to the wisdom of those to whom the Irish Question
presents itself only as a single and simple issue--namely, whether the
laws which are to put all these things right shall be made at St.
Stephen's by the collective wisdom of the United Kingdom, aided by the
voice of Ireland--which is adequately represented--or whether these laws
shall be made by Irishmen alone in a Parliament in College Green.

It is obviously necessary that, in presenting a comprehensive scheme for
dealing with the conditions I have roughly indicated. I should make some
reference to the attitude towards Home Rule of both the Nation