A calm observer can even now see that the complete dissolution of the
connection between Great Britain and Ireland, disastrous as in many
respects such an event would undoubtedly be, holds out to the larger
country the possibility of two advantages.

Loss of territory might be equivalent in some aspects to increase of
power.

There exists in Europe no country so completely at unity with itself as
Great Britain. Fifty years of reform have done their work, and have
removed the discontents, the divisions, the disaffection, and the
conspiracies which marked the first quarter or the first half of this
century. Great Britain, if left to herself, could act with all the
force, consistency, and energy given by unity of sentiment and community
of interests. The distraction and the uncertainty of our political
aims, the feebleness and inconsistency with which they are pursued,
arise, in part at least, from the connection with Ireland. Neither
Englishmen nor Irishmen are to blame for the fact that it is difficult
for communities differing in historical associations and in political
conceptions to keep step together in the path of progress. For other
evils arising from the connection the blame must rest on English
Statesmen. All the inherent vices of party government, all the
weaknesses of the Parliamentary system, all the evils arising from the
perverse notion that reform ought always to be preceded by a period of
lengthy and more than half-factitious agitation met by equally
factitious resistance, have been fostered and increased by the
inter-action of Irish and English politics. No one can believe that the
inveterate habit of ruling one part of the United Kingdom on principles
which no one would venture to apply to the government of any other part
of it, can have produced anything but the most injurious effect on the