own
children. And John Bull, honest, sturdy John Bull, believing the house
to be his, thinks that the only thing between him and the woman is
the matter of wages; that all she wants is an extra shilling. Ireland
wants but one thing in the world. She wants her house to herself, and
the stranger out of her house.

While he is, in his heart, perfectly aware of this, John Bull (for the
reasons given by Richard Cox), is quite determined that nothing shall
get him out of the house. "Separation is unthinkable," say English
Ministers. The task of Ireland is to-day what it always has been--to
get the stranger out of the house. It is no shame to Ireland or her
sons, that up to this they have failed in each attempt. Those attempts
are pillars of fire in her history, beacons of light in the desert of
sin, where the Irish Israel still wanders in search of the promised
land. Few of the peoples in Europe who to-day make up the concert of
powers, have, unaided, expelled the invader who held them down, and
none has been in the situation of Ireland.

As Mr. Gladstone wrote in 1890, "can anyone say we should have treated
Ireland as we have done had she lain not between us and the ocean, but
between us and Europe?"

In introducing the scheme of mild Home Rule termed the Councils Bill
in 1907, Mr. Birrell prefaced it with the remark that "separation was
unthinkable--save in the event of some great world cataclysm." World
cataclysms up to this have not reached Ireland--England intervened too
well. She has maintained her hold by sea power. The lonely Andromeda
saw afar off the rescuing Perseus, a nude figure on the coast of Spain
or France, but long ere his flight reached her rock-bound feet she
beheld him fall, bruised and mangled, and devoured by the watching sea
monster.

Had Italy been placed as Ireland is, cut off from all external succour
save across a sea held by a relentless jailor, would she have been
to-day a free people, ally of Austria on terms of high equality?

The blood shed by the founders of modern Italy would all have been
shed in vain--that blood that sanctified the sword of Garibaldi--had
it not been for the selfish policy of Louis Napoleon and the invading
armies of France. Italy, no more than Ireland, could have shaken
herself free had it not been for aid from abroad. The late Queen
Victoria saw clearly the parallel, and as hereditary custodian of
Ireland, Her Majesty protested against the effort then being made t