nts differ from our own.

We are apt to think that what has worked well here will work well in
Ireland; that Irishmen who differ from us are unreasonable; and that
their proposals for change must be mistaken. We do not make allowance
for the soreness of feeling prevailing among men who have long objected
to the system by which Ireland has been governed, and who find that
their earnest appeals for reform have been, until recent times,
contemptuously disregarded by English politicians. Time after time
moderate counsels have been rejected until too late. Acts of an
exceptional character intended to secure law and order have been very
numerous, and every one of them has caused fresh irritation; while
remedial measures have been given in a manner which has not won the
sympathy of the people, because they have not been the work of the Irish
themselves, and have not been prepared in their own way.

Parliament seems during the past Session to have fallen into the same
error. By the power of an English majority, measures have been passed
which are vehemently opposed by the political leaders and the majority
of the Irish nation, and which are only agreeable to a small minority in
Ireland. This action can only succeed if the Irish can be persuaded to
relinquish the national sentiments of Home Rule; and yet this was never
stronger or more vigorous than at the present time. It is supported by
millions of Irish settled in America and in Australia; and here I would
say that it has often struck me that the strong feeling of
dissatisfaction, or, I might say, of disaffection, among the Irish is
fed and nurtured by the marked contrast existing between the social
condition of large numbers of the Irish in the South and West of Ireland
and the views and habits of their numerous relatives in the United
States.

The social condition of many parts of Ireland is as backward, or perhaps
more backward, than the condition of the rural population of England at
the end of last or the beginning of this century. The Irish peasantry
still live in poor hovels, often in the same room with animals; they
have few modern comforts; and yet they are in close communication with
those who live at ease in the cities and farms of the United States.
They are also imbued with all the advanced political notions of the
American Republic, and are sufficiently educated to read the latest
political doctrines in the Press which circulates among them. Their
social cond