force by Burke more than forty years before a Roman Catholic was
admitted to Parliament, and the whole case in favour of the Catholics
had been argued out in the presence of the nation long before the
passing of the Catholic Relief Bill. No movement ever appealed to keener
popular sympathies than the movement for the abolition of slavery. Yet
the Abolitionists made their case out--proved it, as lawyers say, "up to
the very hilt," before a single slave was released from bondage. The
Irish Church (it may be suggested) was abolished off-hand. This apparent
exception to the regular course of long argumentative controversy which
in England marks all great innovations has misled Home Rulers, yet the
exception is only apparent. Long before 1869 the intelligence of
England--one might say of the civilised world--had been convinced by
the power of reason that the maintenance in a Roman Catholic country,
and at the expense of a Roman Catholic population, of a Protestant
ecclesiastical establishment was an indefensible anomaly. The walls fell
at the first blast which sounded attack, because the foundations had
been argumentatively sapped and undermined for more than a generation.
With the cause of Home Rule it is far otherwise. Its sudden progress has
been characterised by a singular absence of systematic discussion. No
one supposes that its English advocates are deficient in talent or in
zeal. Mr. Gladstone, Mr. John Morley, Mr. Bryce--to name no others--are
as competent apologists for any opinion they entertain as can well be
found. They have been put upon their mettle; they have addressed the
nation in Parliament and out of Parliament; they have produced a certain
number of reasons, which deserve respectful consideration, in support of
their favourite innovation. But no candid critic can feel that these
eminent men, and other less distinguished labourers in the same cause,
have put forward arguments of strength enough to account for the
undoubted conviction of the reasoners. Appeals to trust in the people,
to confidence in human nature, to the strength of love as contrasted