the literary
revival, and the work of the only truly Irish organ of government, the
Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction.

Now, where do we stand? Are the phenomena I have reviewed arguments for
Home Rule or against Home Rule? Do they tend to show that Ireland is
"fitter" now for Home Rule, or that she manages very well without Home
Rule? These are superfluous questions. They are never asked save of
countries obviously designed to govern themselves and obstinately denied
the right. Who would say now of Canada or Australia that they ought to
have solved their economic, agrarian, and religious problems and have
evolved an indigenous literature before they were declared fit for Home
Rule, or--still more unreasonable proposition--that their strenuous
efforts after self-help and internal harmony in the teeth of political
disabilities proved, in so far as they were successful, that external
government was a success?

Yet these questions were, as a fact, asked of the Colonies, as they are
asked of Ireland. And misgovernment increased, and passions rose, and
blood flowed, while, in the guise of dispassionate psychologists, a
great many narrow, egotistical, and bullying people at home propounded
these arid conundrums. Where is our common sense? The Irish phenomena I
have described arise in spite of the absence of Home Rule, and the
denial of Home Rule sets an absolute and final bar to progress beyond a
certain point.

That is certain; one cannot live in Ireland with one's eyes and ears
open without realizing it. All social and economic effort, successful as
it is up to a certain point, and strong as its tendency is to promote
nationalist feeling of the noblest kind, has to struggle desperately
against the benumbing influence of abstract "politics." Suspicion comes
from both sides. Both Unionists and Nationalists, for example, at one
time or another have looked askance on the Co-operative movement and on
the Department of Agriculture as being too Nationalist or too Unionist
in tendency. Unionists caused Sir Horace Plunkett to lose his seat in
Parliament in 1905; and Nationalists, though with some constitutional
justification, secured his removal from office in 1907. At this moment
there is friction and suspicion in this particular matter which seems to
the impartial observer to be artificial, and which would not exist, or
would be transmuted into something perfectly harmless, and probably
highly beneficial, wer