streak of sea another people, during the same period, increased and
multiplied and prospered mightily, spread their laws and institutions,
and achieved in every portion of the globe material success which they
can call their own. Yet, although Irishmen have done much to win that
success for the English people to enjoy, and are to-day foremost in
maintaining the great empire which their brain and muscle were ever
ready to augment, Ireland makes no claim for herself in respect of the
achievement. It is to her but a proof of what her sons will do for her
in the coming time; it does not bring her nearer to her heart's desire.

Although the nineteenth century, with all its marvellous contributions
to human progress, left Ireland with her hopes unfulfilled; although its
sun went down upon the British people with their greatest failure still
staring them in the face, its last decade witnessed at first a change in
the attitude of England towards Ireland, and afterwards a profound
revolution in the thoughts of Ireland about herself. The strangest and
most interesting feature of these developments was that in practical
England the Irish Question became the great political issue, while in
sentimental Ireland there set in a reaction from politics and an
inclination to the practical. The twentieth century has already brought
to birth the new Ireland upon whose problems I shall write. If the human
interest of these problems is to be realized, if their significance is
not to be as wholly misunderstood as that of every other Irish movement
which has perplexed the statesmen who have managed our affairs, they
must be studied in their relation to the English and Irish events of the
period in which the new Ireland was conceived.

In 1885 Gladstone, appealing to an electorate with a large accession of
newly enfranchised voters, transferred the struggle over the Irish
Question from Ireland to Great Britain. The position taken up by the