Page:Home rule (Beesly).djvu/11

11 with Messrs. Rothschild about the price of issue of a 4 per cent. loan, will make people over here rub their eyes. The landlords who, unwisely relying on Opera-house unanimity, and the political acumen of Professor Tyndall and the Poet Laureate, allowed the sand to run out of Mr. Gladstone's hour-glass, will cling to the uncrowned king, and console themselves with the reflection that he is the owner of acres in Wicklow, and has granite quarries to develope. History has yet to furnish an example of any community failing to organise adequate protection for life and property, when foreign complications are not present.

And now observe. When once we have realised that union with Ireland is not so valuable to us as to be worth any considerable sacrifice, from that moment it becomes possible to establish it on a solid and permanent basis. For the truth is that Ireland has vastly more to gain by union than we have. Oddly enough this important truth is being constantly asserted by English politicians who yet have not the good sense and courage to act upon it. It is a truth which hitherto has been somewhat obscured from the perception of the Irish, because they have never yet had occasion to give it a thought. But it must certainly have afforded matter for serious reflection within the last few weeks to those able and distinguished Irishmen who are likely soon to be responsible for the government of their country.

What it comes to is this. The Irish are at present masters of the situation, because we are afraid of separation and they are not, or rather think they are not. But the moment we make up our minds that it will be better for us to separate than to be governed by Ireland—which is virtually our fate now—we are in a position to offer them independence on either the colonial or federal model, subject to all such conditions as we can reasonably desire to impose. At present, Mr. Gladstone is challenged to prove that the guarantees he has devised will be of any avail against the bad faith or ill will of the Irish people. It must be confessed that there are only two possible guarantees