the Anglo-Irish Union in repressing a
dangerous nationality. Did the proof of the error in Canada induce
Englishmen to question the soundness of the precedent on which the error
was based? On the contrary, the lesson passed unnoticed, and the Irish
precedent has survived to darken thought, to retard democratic progress,
and to pervert domestic and Imperial policy to this very day. It even
had the truly extraordinary retrospective effect of obliterating from
the minds of many eminent statesmen the significance of the Canadian
parallel; for it is only six years ago that a Secretary of State for the
Colonies penned a despatch recommending for the Transvaal a form of
government similar to that which actually produced the Canadian
disorders of 1837, and supporting it by an argument whose effect was not
merely to resuscitate what time had proved to be false in Durham's
doctrine, but to discard what time had proved to be true. As for
Ireland herself, I know no more curious illustration of the strong
tendency, even on the part of the most fair-minded men, to place that
country outside the pale of social or political science, and of the
extreme reluctance to judge its inhabitants by the elementary standards
of human conduct, than the book to which I referred above--Mr.
Locker-Lampson's "A Consideration of Ireland in the Nineteenth Century."
For what he admits to be the ruinous results of British Government in
the past, the author in the last few pages of a lengthy volume has no
better cure to suggest than a continuance of British government, and he
defends this course by a terse enumeration of the very phenomena which
in Durham's opinion rendered the grant of Home Rule to Canada
imperative, concluding with a paragraph which, with the substitution of
"Canada" for "Ireland," constitutes an admirably condensed epitome of
the arguments used both by politicians at home, and the minorities in
Canada, in favour of Durham's error and against the truth he
established.

Mr. Lecky represents a somewhat different school of thought, and reached
his Unionism by reasoning more profound and consistent, but, on the
other hand, wholly destructive of the Imperial theory as held by the
modern school of Imperialists. His fear and distrust of democracy in all
its forms and in all lands[2] was such that he naturally dreaded Irish
Nationalism, which is a form of democratic revolt suppressed so long and
by such harsh methods as to exhibit features easil