general condition of the people must have struck every observer. Ireland is no doubt still very poor if compared with England, or even with Scotland; but its poverty consists much more in the absence of great wealth than in the presence of great misery. It has been recently stated that while paupers are in England as one to twenty, and in Scotland as one to twentythree of the population, in Ireland they are only as one to seventy-four. At the same time industrial habits have been rapidly spreading. The custom of early marriages, which lay at the root of the economical evils of Ireland, has, according to recent statistics, been seriously checked; and the standard of comfort is far higher and the spirit of industrial progress far more active than in any previous portion of the century. If industrial improvement, if the rapid increase of material comforts among the poor, could allay political discontent, Ireland should never have been so loyal as at present.

Nor can it be said that ignorance is at the root of the discontent. The Irish people have always, even in the darkest period of the penal laws, been greedy for knowledge, and few races show more quickness in acquiring it. The admirable system of national education established in the present century is beginning to bear abundant fruit, and among the younger generation at least, the level of knowledge is quite as high as in England. Indeed, one of the most alarming features of Irish disloyalty is its close and evident connection with education. It is sustained by a cheap literature, written often with no mean literary skill, which penetrates into every village, gives the people their first

'See 'Fawcett on Pauperism,' p. 27.

political impressions, forms and directs their enthusiasm, and seems likely in the long leisure of the pastoral life to exercise an increasing power. Close observers of the Irish character will hardly have failed to notice the great change which since the famine has passed over the amusements of the people. The old love of boisterous out-of-door sports has almost disappeared, and those who would have once sought their pleasures in the market or the fair now gather in groups in the public-house, where one of their number reads out a

Fenian newspaper. Whatever else this change may portend, it is certainly of no good omen for the future loyalty of the people.

It was long customary in England to underrate this disaffection by ascribing it to very transitory causes. The quarter of a century that followed the Union was marked by almost perpetual disturbance, but this it was said was merely the natural ground-swell of agitation which followed a great reform. It was then the popular theory that it was the work of O'Connell, who was described during many years as the one obstacle to the peace of Ireland, and whose death was made the subject of no little congratulation, as though Irish discontent had perished with its organ. It was as if, the Eolian harp being shattered, men wrote an epitaph upon the wind. Experience has abundantly proved the folly of such theories. Measured by mere chronology, a little more than seventy years have passed since the Union; but famine and emigration have compressed into those years the work of centuries. The character, feelings, and conditions of the people have been profoundly altered. A long course of remedial legislation has been carried, and during many years the

national party has been without a leader and without a stimulus. Yet, so far from subsiding, disloyalty in Ireland is probably as extensive, and is certainly as malignant, as at the death of O'Connell, and in many respects the public opinion of the country has palpably deteriorated. O'Connell taught an attachment to the connection, a loyalty to the Crown, a respect for the rights of property, a consistency of Liberalism, which we look for in vain among his successors; and that faith in moral force and constitutional agitation which he made it one of his greatest objects to instil into the people has almost vanished with the failure of his agitation.

The causes of this deep-seated disaffection I have endeavoured in some degree to investigate in the following essays. To the merely dramatic historian the history of Ireland will probably appear less attractive than that of most other countries, for it is somewhat deficient in great characters and in splendid episodes; but to a philosophic student of history it presents an interest of the very highest order. In no other history can we trace more clearly the chain of causes and effects, the influence of past legislation, not only upon the material condition, but also upon the character of a nation. In no other history especially can we investigate more fully the evil consequences which must ensue from disregarding that sentiment of nationality which, whether it be wise or foolish, whether it be desirable or the reverse, is at least one of the strongest and most enduring of human passions. This, as I conceive, lies at the root of Irish discontent. It is a question of nationality as truly as in Hungary or in Poland. Special grievances or anomalies may aggravate, but do not cause it, and

they become formidable only in as far as they are connected with it. What discontent was felt against the Protestant Established Church was felt chiefly because it was regarded as an English garrison sustaining an anti-national system; and the agrarian difficulty never assumed its full intensity till by the Repeal agitation the landlords had been politically alienated from the people.

The evils of the existing disloyalty are profoundly felt in both nations. Nature and a long and inextricable union of interests have made it imperatively necessary for the two countries to continue under the same rule. No reasonable man who considers their relative positions can believe that England would ever voluntarily relinquish the government of Ireland, or that Ireland could ever establish her independence in opposition to England, unless the English navy were utterly shattered. Even in the event of the dissolution of the Empire, Irish separation could only be achieved at the expense of a civil war, which would probably result in the massacre of a vast section of the Irish people, would drive from the country much of its intelligence and most of its capital, and would inevitably and immediately reduce it to a condition of the most abject misery. Nor would any class suffer more than the class by which revolutions are usually made. For poor men of energy and talent, the magnificent field of Indian and colonial administration, which is now thrown open to competition, offers a career of ambition incomparably surpassing in splendour that which any other European nation can furnish; and Irishmen have fully availed themselves of it. Though their country is but a small one, it now plays no inconsiderable part

among men; for while Irish emigration is leavening the New World, Irish administrators under the British Crown are organising in no small degree the empires or the republics of the future. All this noble career for talent and enterprise would be destroyed by separation; every element of Irish greatness would dwindle or perish; the energies of the people, confined to the narrow circle of a small and isolated State, would be wasted in petty quarrels, sink into inanity, or degenerate into anarchical passions.

These would be the consequences of the separation of Ireland from the British Empire. That such a severance is almost impossible may be readily admitted; but still, in a great European convulsion, Ireland might be a serious danger to England. Even in time of peace its discontent necessitates a heavy military expenditure, and the emigration from its shores is multiplying enemies to England through the New World. In foreign policy it is a manifest source both of weakness and discredit. For many years English Liberals have made it a main principle of their foreign policy to advocate the settlement of all disputes between rulers and their subjects in accordance with the desires of the latter; and the fact that in a portion of their own country the existing form of government is notoriously opposed to the wishes of the people supplies their adversaries with an obvious answer. In home politics, the presence in Parliament of a certain number of members who are alienated from the general interests of the Empire, and actuated by a spirit out of harmony with that of the constitution, is a serious danger; and it acquires additional gravity as parties disintegrate or tend to equilibrium. It