y, under an entirely heterogeneous set of circumstances, in
a different country, and in a society with wholly dissimilar
requirements. That is the argument if we straighten it out. The
childishness of any such contention is so obvious, that I should be
ashamed of reproducing it, were it not that this very contention has
made its appearance at my expense several times a month for the last
two years in all sorts of important and respectable prints.

For instance, it appears that I once said somewhere that Danton
looked on at the doings of his bloodier associates with "sombre
acquiescence." _Argal_, it was promptly pointed out--and I espy the
dark phrase constantly adorning leading articles to this day--the man
who said that Danton sombrely acquiesced in the doings of Billaud,
Collet, and the rest, must of necessity, being of a firm and logical
mind, himself sombrely acquiesce in moonlighting and cattle-houghing
in Ireland. Apart from the curious compulsion of the reasoning,
what is the actual state of the case? Acquiescence is hardly a good
description of the mood of a politician who scorns delights and lives
laborious days in actively fighting for a vigorous policy and an
effective plan which, as he believes, would found order in Ireland
on a new and more hopeful base. He may be wrong, but where is the
acquiescence, whether sombre or serene?

The equally misplaced name of Fatalism is sometimes substituted for
acquiescence, in criticisms of this stamp. In any such sense anybody
is a fatalist who believes in a relation between cause and effect.
If it is fatalism to assume that, given a certain chain of social or
political antecedents, they will inevitably be followed by a certain
chain of consequences, then every sensible observer of any series of
events is a fatalist. Catholic Emancipation, the extension of the
franchise, and secret ballot, have within the last sixty years
completely shifted the balance of political power in Ireland. Land
legislation has revolutionised the conditions of ownership. These vast
and vital changes in Ireland have been accompanied by the transfer of
decisive power from aristocracy to numbers in Great Britain, and Great
Britain is arbiter. Is it fatalism, or is it common sense, to perceive
that one new effect of new causes so potent must be the necessity
of changing the system of Irish government? To dream that you could
destroy the power of the old masters without finding new, and that
having