nes. Govern them upon a principle of freedom." At that
moment, after half a century of coercion and neglect under what was
called the "Union," Ireland was bleeding, as it seemed, to death.
Scarcely recovered from the stunning blow of the famine, she was
undergoing in a fresh dose of clearances and evictions the result of
that masterpiece of legislative unwisdom, the Encumbered Estates Act.
Her people were leaving her by hundreds of thousands, cursing the name
of England as bitterly as the evicted Ulster farmers and the ruined
weavers of the eighteenth century had cursed it, and bearing their
wrongs and hatred to the same friendly shore, America. For the main
stream of emigration, which before the Union had set towards the
American States, and from the Union until the famine towards Canada,
reverted after the famine towards the United States, impregnating that
nation with an hostility to Great Britain which in subsequent years
became a grave international danger, and which, though greatly
diminished, still remains an obstacle to the closer union of the
English-speaking races. On the other hand, it is interesting to observe
that among the Irish emigrants to countries within the Empire, and a
very important part of this emigration was to Australasia, the
anti-British sentiment was far less tenacious, though the affection for
their own native country was no less passionate.

Whatever we may conclude about the motives behind the concession of Home
Rule to Australia and New Zealand, we may regard it as fortunate that
they lay too far away for any close criticism from statesmen at home,
whether before or after the attainment of self-government. Most of these
statesmen would have been scandalized by the manner in which these
vigorous young democracies, destitute of the patrician element, shaped
their own political destiny by the light of nature and in the teeth of
great difficulties. Almost to a man their leaders in this great work
would have been regarded as "turbulent demagogues and dangerous
agitators," and often were so regarded, when the rumour of their
activities penetrated to far-off London. The old catchwords of
revolution, spoliation and treason, consecrated to the case of Ireland,
would have been applied here with equal vehemence, and were in fact
applied by the official classes in the Colonies themselves, round whom
small anti-democratic groups, calling themselves "loyal," crystallized,
as in the Provinces of Upper C