for no other reason its exponents would be suspect in that they have
not scrupled to assure a sympathetic Orange audience of the fact that
they are on the point of rending asunder the allegiance of Ireland to
the National cause. While protesting aloud their patriotism they have
not thought it incompatible with their declarations to flood the columns
of the Unionist Press--the most hostile to the democracy of their
country--with expositions of their views, coupled with strident
denunciations of their Nationalist opponents.

Their tirades have been received with open arms by the Orangemen as
affording a weapon in the division of their common enemy, by which may
be maintained that _de facto_, if not _de jure_, ascendancy, which in
spite of the ballot, the extended franchise, and local government,
persists in Ireland. But, on the other hand, as has been well said, the
fact is not lost on the great bulk of the Irish people that it is from
the Sinn Fein section--the little coterie which professes to stand for
every sort of idealism--that all the imputations and innuendoes have
come.

This extreme school, of course, will in no sense be pleased by
ameliorative legislation as applied by this or any other Government,
because the worse England treats Ireland the stronger will be their
position, and every concession gained by the country is so much ground
cut from under their feet; but the policy of refusing all attempts at
piecemeal improvement, on the ground that a complete reversal of the
existing system is called for, may be magnificent, and on this there
must be two opinions, but it is not practical politics which will
commend itself to the ordinary Irishman. "Men," wrote Edmund Burke more
than a hundred years ago, "do not live upon blotted paper; the
favourable or the unfavourable mind of the rulers is of more consequence
to a nation than the black letter of any statute." Irish people are not
likely to fail to realise this, and the experience of the past is such
as to show that remedial legislation has been powerless to stay the
National demand, and concessions, so far from putting a period to the
appeals of the people for the control of their own affairs, have rather
increased the vehemence of their demand, for with democracy, as with
most things, _l'appetit vient en mangeant_.

As against the body which we have been considering one hears people
speaking of the liberal school of Unionists--the rise of which is so
marked