active part in the public life of their country; and
there will be a strong desire among Irish Nationalists to bring in at
the outset those who wish to come in. On the other hand, no less
certainly, there will be the feeling that is natural towards those who
wish to reap where they have not sown; and the gentry will need to make
allowance for this. If they set out with the notion, as some did when
Local Government was established, that places are theirs by right when
they condescend to take them--that they are entitled to election because
they have more money, more education, because, if you will, they are, in
the eye of pure reason, better qualified--nothing but trouble can come
of such a disposition. Ireland, which in George Henry Moore's time was
the most aristocratically governed part of the British Isles, is now by
far more democratic, at all events, than England: the poor man is on a
level with the rich, and means to stay there. Those who want to go into
Irish politics, under Home Rule as now, must take their chances in the
ruck; but if they do, they will find a people ready and even eager to
recognise their qualities, and to allot perhaps more consideration than
is due to their social position.

With all their practical democracy, the Irish have a great tenderness
for "the old stock." In the cases (and there are many hundreds of them)
where a landlord or professional man or Protestant clergyman has been
for long years a real friend and support and counsellor to his poorer
neighbours, as Irish in voice and looks and gesture as they, sharing
their tastes and their aversions, their sport and their sorrow, yet
divided and cut off from them by a kind of political religion, I believe
from my heart that there will be on both sides a willingness to
celebrate the end of that old discord in some happy compact. But on both
sides there must be generosity and a sympathy with natural hesitations
and reluctances. Whatever comes or goes, the old domination of the
gentry has disappeared; yet, whatever comes or goes, men of that class
may find a sphere of usefulness and even of power in Ireland. But this
will be infinitely easier to achieve when the great subject of
contention is removed, and when the ex-landlord can seek election, and
the ex-tenant can support him, without a sense on either side of turning
against the traditional loyalties of a class.

1913.

YESTERDAY IN IRELAND.

"Oh, maybe it was yesterday, or for