What has happened since the above paragraphs were written, ten months
ago, has confirmed more quickly and completely than the writer expected
the forecasts they contain. Home Rule is no longer a word of terror,
even to those English and Scotch voters who were opposed to it in July,
1886. Most sensible men in the Tory and Dissentient Liberal camps have
come to see that it is inevitable; and, while they continue to resist
it for the sake of what is called consistency, or because they do not
yet see in what form it is to be granted, they are disposed to regard
its speedy arrival as the best method of retreat from an indefensible
position.
The repressive policy which the present Ministry are attempting in
Ireland--for in the face of their failures one cannot say that they are
carrying out any policy--is rendering Coercion Acts more and more
detested by the English people. The actualities of Ireland, the social
condition of her peasantry, the unwisdom of the dominant caste, the
incompetence of the bureaucracy which affects to rule her, are being, by
the full accounts we now receive, brought home to the mind of England
and Scotland as they never were before, and produce their appropriate
effect upon the heart and conscience of the people. The recognition by
the Liberal party of the rights of Ireland, the visits of English
Liberals to Ireland, the work done by Irishmen in English
constituencies, are creating a feeling of unity and reciprocal interest
between the masses of the people on both sides of the Channel without
example in the seven hundred years that have passed since Strongbow's
landing.
This was the thing most needed to make Home Rule safe and full of
promise, because it affords a guarantee that in such political contests
as may arise in future, the division will not be, as heretofore, between
the Irish people on the one side and the power of Britain on the other,
but between two parties, each of which will have adherents in both
islands. We may now at last hope that national hatreds will vanish; that
England will unlearn her arrogance and Ireland her suspicion; that the
basis is being laid for a harmonious co-operation of both nations in
promoting the welfare and greatness of a common Empire.
Many of the Irish patriots of 1798 and 1848 desired Separation, because
they thought that Ireland, attached to England, could never be more
than the obscure satellite of a greater State. When Ireland has been
heartily welcomed by the democracy of Great Britain as an equal partner,
the ground for any such desire will have disappeared, and Union will
rest on a foundation firmer than has ever before existed. Ireland will
feel, when those rights of self-government have been secured for which
she has pleaded so long, that she owes them, not only to her own
tenacity and courage, but to the magnanimity, the justice, and the
freely given sympathy of the English and Scottish people.
_October_, 1887.