ses. It would not make the country tranquil,
as firm and long-continued repression might possibly do. Neither would
it satisfy the people's demands, and divert them from struggles against
England to disputes and discussions among themselves, as the gift of
genuine self-government might do.]

[Footnote 7: Some of us had tried to do so. I prepared such a scheme in
the autumn of 1885, and submitted it to some specially competent
friends. Their objections, made from what would now be called the
Unionist point of view, were weighty. But their effect was to convince
me that the scheme erred on the side of caution; and I believe the
experience of other Liberals who worked at the problem to have been the
same as my own--viz. that a small and timid scheme is more dangerous
than a large and bold one. Thus the result of our thinking from July,
1885, till April, 1886, was to make us more and more disposed to reject
half-and-half solutions. Some of us (of whom I was one) expressed this
feeling by saying in our election addresses in 1885, "the further we go
in giving the Irish people the management of their own affairs (subject
to the maintenance of the unity of the empire) the better."]

[Footnote 8: Quoted from an article contributed by myself to the
American _Century Magazine_, which I refer to because, written in the
spring of 1883, it expresses the ideas here stated.]

HOME RULE AND IMPERIAL UNITY

BY LORD THRING

The principal charge made against the scheme of Home Rule contained in
the Irish Government Bill, 1886, is that it is incompatible with the
maintenance of the unity of the Empire and the supremacy of the Imperial
Parliament. A further allegation states that the Bill is useless, as
agrarian exasperation lies at the root of Irish discontent and Irish
disloyalty, and that no place would be found for a Home Rule Bill even
in Irish aspirations if an effective Land Bill were first passed. An
endeavour will be made in the following pages to secure a verdict of
acquittal on both counts--as to the charge relating to Imperial unity
and the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, by proving that the
accusation is absolutely unfounded, and based partly on a misconception
of the nature of Imperial ties, and partly on a misapprehension of the
effect of the provisions of the Home Rule Bill as bearing on Imperial
questions; and as to the inutility of the Home Rule Bill in view of the
necessity of Land Reform, by showing tha