he help
of Orange votes--two courses, each irreconcilable with the other. Their
position reminds me of Alphonse Daudet's immortal creation, Tartarin de
Tarascon, with a double nature, partly that of Don Quixote and partly of
Sancho Panza, at one moment urged on by the glory, and at the next held
back by the prospect of the hardships, of lion-hunting in
Africa--"Couvre toi de gloire," dit Tartarin Quichotte, "Couvre toi de
flanelle dit Tartarin Sancho."

It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a
government which does not recognise democratic principles to make any
headway in the work of amelioration in Ireland. The moral is that those
responsible for the administration of the country have found themselves
by the force of circumstances, even against their will, driven to apply
popular principles of government in order that they may secure fairness
and efficiency, and my contention that this is so is borne out by the
two incidents to which I have referred, in which the Conservatives
escaped only by the skin of their teeth from committing themselves to a
policy which would have won them the hostility of their Orange allies.

The latter have in truth secured their own way to a remarkable extent.
The promise has not been fulfilled which Mr. Chamberlain made after the
Unionist victory of 1886, to the effect that Lord Salisbury and the
Conservative leaders were prepared to consider and review the
"irritating centralising system of administration which is known as
Dublin Castle." At the time of the ill-fated Round Table Conference,
which Sir William Harcourt convened, Mr. Chamberlain committed himself
to the expediency of establishing some form of legislative authority in
Dublin, and admitted that such a body should be allowed to organise the
form of Executive Government on whatever lines it thought fit, and Sir
West Ridgeway, as Under Secretary, subsequently carried out the behests
of the same Government by outlining a scheme of self-government by means
of Provincial Councils with a partly elected board to control finance.
All these facts serve to show the injustice--in view of acknowledged
facts--of the description by the late Attorney-General for Ireland of
the Wyndham proposals as "mean and cruel desertion."

There is no part of the Irish question in respect of which more has been
said which is misleading than what is known as the problem of Ulster. I
have already explained what a misnomer thi