Page:The Complete Works of Henry George Volume 3.djvu/67

 PRINCIPLE THE BEST POLICY. 59

Once force the discussion on this line, and the Irish reformers will compel to their side the most active and powerful of the men who mold thought.

And they will not merely close up their own ranks, now in danger of being broken ; they will "carry the war into Africa," and make possible the most powerful of political combinations.

It is already beginning to be perceived that the Irish movement, so far as it has yet gone, is merely in the interest of a class ; that, so far as it has yet voiced any demand, it promises nothing to the laboring and artisan classes. Its opponents already see this opportunity for division, which, even without their efforts, must soon show itself, and which, now that the first impulse of the movement is over, will the more readily develop. To close up its ranks, and hold them firm, so that, even though they be forced to bend, they will not break and scatter, it must cease to be a movement looking merely to the benefit of the tenant-farmer, and become a move- ment for the benefit of the whole laboring-class.

And the moment this is done the Irish land agitation assumes a new and a grander phase. It ceases to be an Irish movement ; it becomes but the van of a world-wide struggle. Count the loss and the gain.

�� �