of England likes to confess upon the _naïve_ but intense conviction that
it is too much to expect from five hundred and more English gentlemen
that they should take the trouble of withstanding the continuous
pressure exerted by eighty-six Parnellites. Cowardice masks itself under
the show of compromise, and men of eminent respectability yield to the
terror of being bored concessions which their forefathers would have
refused to the threat of armed rebellion. It is unnecessary to explain
how this condition of opinion, under which the best and the lowest
feelings of human nature are blended in a current of democratic
sentiment, predisposes large bodies of Englishmen towards acquiescence
in the Home Rule movement. My aim is not so much to analyse with
precision the mode in which the cause of Home Rule is fostered by the
moral atmosphere of the day, as to insist upon the all-important
consideration that the progress of the Home Rule movement is due rather
to the encouragement it derives from prevailing sentiment than to any
intellectual conviction on the part of Englishmen that it is dictated by
considerations of sound policy.




CHAPTER IV.

ENGLISH ARGUMENTS IN FAVOUR OF HOME RULE.


[Sidenote: Arguments by which Home Rule policy defended.]

To lay stress upon the consideration that the Home Rule movement in
England derives its force from the condition of public feeling is not,