of the unnatural form of the polity which holds the field
can be adduced than is to be found in the political allies of the two
parties in Ireland; for the Catholics, democratic though they may be,
are not associated with the party to which the traditions of a Church,
the most Conservative force in Europe, one might think would ally them,
and the Orange Presbyterians, who are at heart Radicals, are divorced
from their dissenting kinsmen in Great Britain and form the tail of the
Conservative Party. Hence it is that we have fallen between two stools,
and University reform, to the principle of which Lord Salisbury, Lord
Randolph Churchill, Sir Michael Hicks Beach, Mr. Balfour, and Mr.
Wyndham have been pledged, was shelved over and over again at the
bidding of the Ulster Unionists, while the Conservative House of Lords
thwarted the application of the principles of self-government to which a
Liberal majority in the House of Commons gave its consent. Can anyone,
in view of these facts, feel surprised that "a plague on both your
Houses" expresses the feelings of the Irish people.

Those nice people, to whom political barter is abhorrent, who at the
time of the general election deprecated the "sale for a price" of the
Nationalist vote, for so they were pleased to call what occurred, closed
their eyes to the very obvious price of the Orange vote in the last
Parliament, which took the form of the retirement from office of Mr.
Wyndham, on failure to secure which, as the Orange leader
declared--"Ulster would have to call upon her reserves," meaning, one
must suppose, that the Irish Unionist office holders who were members of
the Ministry in numbers altogether disproportionate to their strength
would be called upon by the Orange Lodges to hand in their seals.

English Catholics are apt to say that if the Irish people in England had
been directed by the Nationalist Party to vote for Conservative
candidates the safety of Catholic schools would thereby have been
safeguarded, but they forget that to put a Conservative Party in power
would be to give a blank cheque to a party pledged to cut down the
Irish, and _pari passu_ the Catholic, representation in the House of
Commons. That the fate of the Catholic voluntary schools in England is a
direct concern of the Irish members is admitted by all who are aware
how vast a majority of the Catholic poor in Great Britain are Irish, if
not by birth, at any rate by origin.

That the efforts in