in the dark for a country whose economic and social condition we did not
understand--a country to which we could not apply our English ideas of
policy; a country whose very temper and feeling were strange to us. We
were really fitter to pass laws for Canada or Australia than for this
isle within sight of our shores.

5. I have said that we were legislating in the dark. But there were two
quarters from which light was proffered, the Irish members and the Irish
Executive. We rejected the first, and could hardly help doing so, for to
accept it would have been to displace our own leaders. We followed the
light which the Executive gave. But in some cases (as notably in the
case of the Coercion Bill of 1881) it proved to be a "wandering fire,"
leading us into dangerous morasses. And we perceived that at all times
legislation at the bidding of the Executive, against the wishes of Irish
members, was not self-government or free government. It was despotism.
The rule of Ireland by the British Parliament was really "the rule of a
dependency through an official, responsible no doubt, but responsible
not to the ruled, but to an assembly of which they form less than a
sixth part."[8] As this assembly closed its ears to the one-sixth, and
gave effect to the will of the official, this was essentially arbitrary
government, and wanted those elements of success which free government
contains.

This experience had, by 1884, convinced us that the present relations of
the British Parliament to Ireland were bad, and could not last; that the
discontent of Ireland was justified; that the existing system, in
alienating the mind of Ireland, tended, not merely to Repeal, but to
Separation; that the simplest, and probably the only effective, remedy
for the increasing dangers was the grant of an Irish Legislature. Two
events clinched these conclusions. One was the Tory surrender of June,