Northern States of America, when the Southern States claimed the benefit
of its application. The argument moreover from the principle of
nationality in reference to the present controversy proves too much. If
the Irish people are a nation, this may give them a right to
independence, but it can never in itself give them a moral claim to
dictate the particular terms of union with England. The second
conviction which underlies the argument from the will of the people is
of far more serious import than any reasoning drawn from even so
respectable a formula as the doctrine of nationality. The dogma that the
will of the people must be obeyed often expresses the rational belief
that under all polities, and especially under the system of popular
government, institutions derive their life, and laws their constraining
power, not from the will of the law-giver, or from the strength of the
army, but from their correspondence with the permanent wishes and habits
of the people. Home Rule, to put this matter in its strongest form,
means, it may be said, the application to Ireland of the very principle
on which the English constitution rests--that a people must be ruled in
accordance with their own permanent ideas of right and of justice, and
that unless this be done, law, because it commands no loyalty, ensures
no obedience. The whole history of the connection between the two
islands which make up the United Kingdom is a warning of the
wretchedness, the calamities, the wickedness and the ruin which follow
upon the attempt to violate this fundamental principle not only of
popular, but of all good and just government. Home Rule may appear to be
an innovation. It is in this point of view simply a return to the
essential ideas of English constitutionalism, it is an attempt to escape
from the false path which has been pursued for centuries, and to return
to the broad highway of government in accordance with popular sympathy.
At this point, however, the argument from the will of the people merges
in the much stronger and more serious train of reasoning derived from