Page:Home rule (Beesly).djvu/10

10 Irishmen would attempt an invasion of the thirty-two millions who inhabit this island? There are people, I know, who measure the distance from Kingstown to Holyhead, or worse still from the coast of Antrim to the Mull of Cantire, and shake their heads. But there are some things one cannot argue about with gravity.

The military disadvantages of Home Rule or separation usually dwelt upon, are of quite another kind. It is said we had better hold Ireland fast while we have got her, because it would be a difficult matter to re-conquer her. Certainly it would. And glad I am to think it. To chastise her if she deserved it would be easy enough. But if she were separated from us to-morrow, for any reason or by any means, there would not in twelve months time be a single public man in England who would desire to reconquer her. Whatever shape chastisement might take, it would not be that. Don't tell me that we should go back to collect taxes or rents, or to take the part of an oppressed Ulster. When once John Bull has tasted the blessing of freedom from the Irish yoke, nothing will induce him to run his neck into it again.

As for the ancient parties, the certainty that they will have to get along together somehow, and settle their differences without the intervention of Lord Randolph Churchill, is the one thing needed to make them drop their weapons. Material interests will assert themselves. It is not the well-to-do people who have anything to fear. They will manage in the long run to hold their own in Ireland, as they have done everywhere else from the beginning of history; and, for the matter of that, considerably more than their own. At present they are heavily weighted by our impotent championship. When the curtain rises, and self-governing Ireland is discovered entering on her new career, it will be found that parties have sorted themselves with amazing promptitude, and after a quite unexpected fashion. The sight of Mr. Parnell and Mr. Healy with Down and Antrim at their back, rallying the party of order, restoring confidence, re-enlisting the old constabulary, suppressing moonlighters, passing an alien act for the benefit of Mr. O'Donovan Rossa, and haggling