elf in the tragic guise of the
early eighties. They have produced an effect on Great Britain too. All
over our country people have seen Bills which they were told
beforehand would be ruinous to the unity and integrity of the United
Kingdom--Land Bills and Local Government Bills--passed into law; and
so far from the dire consequences which were apprehended from these
measures, they have found--you here have found--that great good has
resulted from that legislation. Many people are encouraged by what has
taken place to make a step forward in the future; and I think if we
need to look for any further encouragement, we should find it in the
great and undisputed triumph which, under the mercy of Heaven, has
attended our policy in South Africa, and has resulted in bringing into
the circle of the British Empire a strong and martial race, which
might easily have been estranged for ever.

The Irish polity finds its fellow nowhere in the world. It is a
Government responsible neither to King nor people. It is not a
democratic Government, nor an autocratic Government, nor even an
oligarchical Government. It is a Government hag-ridden by forty-one
administrative Boards, whose functions overlap one another and
sometimes conflict with one another. Some are fed with money from the
Consolidated Fund, some are supplied by vote of the House of Commons,
some are supplied from savings from the Irish Development grant. Some
of these Boards are under the Viceroy, some under the Chief Secretary,
some under Treasury control, and some are under no control at all. The
administration resulting from that system is costly, inefficient,
unhandy beyond all description: a mighty staff of officials and
police; a people desperately poor; taxation which rises automatically
with every increase in the expenditure of this vast and wealthy
island; and a population which dwindles tragically year by year. Add
to all this a loyalist caste, capable and well-organised, who are
taught generation after generation to look for support not to their
own countrymen, but to external force derived from across the sea.
There exists in effect in Ireland at the present time almost exactly
the same situation which would have grown up in South Africa, if we
had not had the wit and the nerve to prevent it. Take the whole of
this situation as I have described it, thrust it into the arena of
British politics to be the centre of contending factions, and the
panorama of Irish gover