constitution of England. If Englishmen could learn to speak and think of
Irishmen with the respect and consideration due to fellow-citizens, if
they could cease to jeer at Irishmen now as not much more than a century
ago they used to jeer at Scotchmen, the Union would soon become
something more than a mere work of legal ingenuity. A change of feeling
would make it easy for English politicians and English voters to
perceive that the local affairs of Ireland ought to be managed in the
Parliament of the United Kingdom in accordance with the opinion of the
Parliamentary representatives of Ireland, just as Scotch affairs are
managed at Westminster in accordance with the opinions of Parliamentary
representatives of Scotland. Towards this reform in the practice which
need not change anything in the law of our constitution, Mr. Bright has
already pointed the way, and Mr. Bright's moral intuitions have more
than once given him a power denied to our other statesmen of prophetic
insight into the future of English policy. Meanwhile those who urge the
maintenance of the Union have a right to insist upon the possibilities
which it contains of reconciling the strength of the Empire with due
regard to the local interests and local sentiment of Ireland.

[Sidenote: And carry out just reforms.]

The Union, lastly, whilst it increases the power of the whole United
Kingdom, provides the means of carrying out, and of carrying out with
due regard to justice, any reform, innovation, or if you please
revolution, required for the prosperity of the Irish people. The duty,
it has been laid down, of an English Minister is to effect by his policy
all those changes in Ireland which a revolution would effect by force.
The maxim comes from a strange quarter, but the doctrine of Disraeli
sums up on this matter the teaching of Mill and De Beaumont, and it is
absolutely sound if you add to it the implied condition that an English