Sir Edward Carson's speech on the 17th of May, at the opening of the Willowfield Drill Hall in Belfast, has been received by the Unionist Press as a quiet but solemn warning; by the organs of the Government it has been treated rather as the vaporing of an angry leader who keeps up the appearance of a brave resistance in a cause already lost; while an apathetic British public, jaded by daily records of excitement from every country in the world, refuse to accept the possibility of anything untoward that would affect them more nearly than would a massacre in Mexico or the Balkan States, or an earthquake in Japan.

And yet, while they have eyes and see not, they are all but face to face with a crisis more grave than the Irish rebellion of 1798, and that may tear England herself as she has not been torn for two hundred and fifty years. The fact is that the British people are tired of the name of Home Rule; they are sick of the dominance of the Nationalist Parliamentary party, and heartily anxious to get rid of the Irish members from the House of Commons. They do not believe that any further harm will come of Home Rule than a loud grumble, and possibly a local riot in Ulster, easily suppressed, and leaving a population that in the course of time would resign themselves to an accomplished fact. This is comforting to those who lie at the feet of the dominant caucus that sits at present on the shattered fragments of the British Constitution, but is it true? If it is not, then we are all but face to face with a very real peril, a peril in which political dissatisfaction, however intense, will pale before sectarian fanaticism, latent in Belfast, and not entirely absent from Glasgow and Liverpool, with which Belfast is

closely allied by commercial and other ties.

Volumes have been written upon this Irish question, and the Government of Ireland Bill has been examined from every point of view in the Press and on the platform-everywhere except in the House of Commons, where discussion has been stifled with the brutal frankness of a Ministry that having for the moment a giant's power are determined to use it as a giant. The Bill has been rejected by the House of Lords, as it would have been rejected by any conceivable independent Second Chamber, and now, in its stereotyped shape, awaits the form of a second acceptance by the Slaves of the Ring in the same House of Commons; but the peculiarity of this first cause and effect of the Parliament Act is that from every quarter, Nationalist, Unionist, or independent, it is condemned as inadequate or unworkable. Its financial proposals are shaken to the foundations by financial writers of the highest repute, while its fantastic provisions that keep the word of promise to the ear and break it to the hope are the cause of deep heart-burning to honest Nationalists, of whom there are many. This is by the way, for if this Government remains in power, so far as two of the three estates of the realm are concerned, it must take its place upon the Statute-book. Happily there are signs that the thinking voters who in ordinary circumstances eschew the turbid waters of party politics are awaking to the danger of the position. They are the reserve of considered power that in times of grave danger decide elections over the heads of the party limpets unthinking and unchangeable-entered upon the agents' lists as safe votes.

It is now beginning to be recognized

that this despotic Government that has destroyed the Second Chamber and reduced the salaried members of the House of Commons to a condition of serfdom is itself held in bondage by a party that has over and over again freely and frankly declared its hostility to the British nation, and owes its success to the knowledge that from the date of the Clerkenwell explosion a Radical Government has gracefully yielded to the arguments of crime and outrage. They may not like it, but though the captured Cabinet may secretly disprove, it is affected by political locomotor ataxy, the feet acting independently of the head.

To recapitulate Irish history in this connection is useless. We may accept it that down to the date of Catholic emancipation Ireland had many grievances, and that during the eighteenth century there were sauguinary incldents that no man, Unionist Nationalist, can read of without hor

ror.

or

Other countries have similar unhappy records of the past, but they wisely bury their dead and refuse to exhume the skeletons as an everlasting reminder. The Ireland with which this Government of Ireland Bill deals is an Ireland prosperous beyond all previous records; an Ireland to which the Imperial Government has advanced or promised over one hundred and fifty millions sterling to enable the tenant farmers to try the experiment of acquiring the full ownership of their farms; an Ireland which enjoys in the fullest measure every extension of county and municipal government enjoyed by England and Scotland; and an Ireland where justice is as ably and impartially administered in the High Courts as it is in Great Britain. In addition to this, the taxes in Ireland are lighter, and while that portion of the United Kingdom pays at present nothing towards the Imperial cost of the Army and Navy

and other necessary items of Imperial expenditure, the Irish members returned to Parliament hold a preponderant influence in that assembly.

Rebellions more or less serious have had their place in the centuries that have rolled by since Pope Adrian endowed King Henry the Second with the Lordship of Ireland by a bull sealed with an emerald seal that accompanied the bequest and gave to Ireland the name of the Emerald Isle. Such rebellions were usually the result of unsatisfied grievances; but this demand for Home Rule comes at a time of abounding prosperity, complete civil and religious equality, and redress of every grievance. It would then seem a matter of surprise, not that one-third of the population are bitterly opposed to a change from the present solidarity of the United Kingdom, but that two-thirds should demand it.

The reasons given for the desire for Home Rule, not in the set speeches of the platform but in the conversations by the wayside, are sometimes curious. There is a widespread belief that under Home Rule the Irish Government will, without delay, open mines in every direction. The belief is quite independent of the existence of minerals. It is there, and one might as well argue on the non-existence of fairies, who are, all the world knows, potent for good or evil. "What good do you expect to get from Home Rule?" was a question put to an intelligent peasant. The answer was prompt: "We will pay no more rent or taxes, and if we want money we'll send up a petition to the Parliament in Dublin and get a grant." That man is an ardent Home Ruler, and is rightly so according to the faith that is in him. His political views were free from sentiment, as were those of a Dublin carman equally anxious for the Bill. "What will you do when Home Rule comes?" was

asked. "What will we do? Faith, we'll tear up them tram-lines," was the reply. Again a non-sentimental but highly practical appreciation of advantageous possibilities from his point of view. There are many thousands whose hopes are as strong and as visionary, and we must not judge too harshly of the play of their Celtic imagination; nor can we ignore the fact that sentiment plays a large part in the agitation. But behind the sentiment is the knowledge that the creation of an Irish Parliament and Ministry would create a large number of small offices for aspirants of the proper way of thinking.

It is difficult for one not resident in Ireland to understand the attitude of the farmers. The Census statistics for Ireland show that the agricultural population in 1911 was 780,867, as against 613,397 engaged in commercial pursuits. The farmers are therefore in a majority, but are practically dominated by the more nimble-minded urban population. The great work of Sir Horace Plunkett in the establishment of cooperative farming societies is beginning to quicken their business instincts, but the struggle between town and country will for sometime result in the political triumph of the towns, whose interest would lie in looking to land rather than commercial profits in the incidence of future taxation. A single farmer will, in conversation. have no hesitation in expressing his doubts as to the advisability of Home Rule, but in the presence of another will speak very guardedly, while with a larger number he will at once declare for the measure. This to an Englishman accustomed to an open assertion of different opinions is difficult to understand, but in parts of Ireland there are occult forces at work that make men living in country places very cautious in expressing opinions that may be distasteful to a majority.

Opponents of Home Rule may be classed in two divisions. One sees in the disruption of the United Kingdom the first symptom of the decadence of England. This is the Imperial aspect. The other, while sharing the views of the first, realizes that, as Irishmen driven from that full citizenship of the United Kingdom that is their birthright, they will be abandoned to the political domination of a faction regarded by them with the deepest distrust born of experience in the past.

On the general question of the effect upon the Empire of the disruption of the United Kingdom it is at present useless to dogmatize. The fact remains that a House of Commons dominated by a log-rolling coalition has destroyed the Constitution under which the Empire was born and has grown to its present proud position, and by promptly yielding to criminal methods has laid the axe to the root of sound and stable government; but in this Home Rule proposal we are brought face to face with a situation that not even the levity of the present Government can afford to disregard, and it behoves thoughtful men to contemplate the position should the Bill become law under the provisions of the Parliament Act. Irishmen of all persuasions have hitherto been part and parcel of the United Kingdom. They have fought and commanded under its banner, and have taken their full share in the expansion of the Empire. The most progressive and prosperous of the population are Unionists to the core, and they bitterly resent their repudiation by Great Britain at the dictation of a party whose speeches in America and elsewhere showed that their goal is total separation from England; who, in their place in Parliament, cheered the Boer successes in the dark days of the South African war, and who refused in an Irish city a place for the