"_Quand vous en êtes arrivés à ce point, croyez bien que dans cette voie
de rigueurs tous vos efforts pour rétablir l'ordre et la paix seront
inutiles. En vain, pour réprimer des crimes atroces, vous appellerez à
votre aide toutes les sévérités du code de Dracon; en vain vous ferez
des lois cruelles pour arrêter le cours de révoltantes cruautés;
vainement vous frapperez de mort le moindre délit se rattachant à ces
grands crimes; vainement, dans l'effroi de votre impuissance, vous
suspendrez le cours des lois ordinaires, proclamerez des comtés entiers
en état de suspicion légale, violerez le principe de la liberté
individuelle, créerez des cours martiales, des commissions
extraordinaires, et pour produire de salutaires impressions de terreur,
multiplierez à l'excès les exécutions captiales._"[17]

No advocate of Home Rule can find a clearer statement of the condition
of things with which on his view the Imperial Parliament is morally
incompetent to deal than in these words of De Beaumont's; but before we
hastily draw any inference from an undoubted fact, let us examine into
the exact nature of the fact. The opposition of Irish opinion to the law
of the land is undoubted, but the opposition is not now, and if we
appeal (as under the present argument we are appealing) to the teaching
of history never has been general opposition to law, or even general
opposition to English law. The statistics of ordinary crime are (it is
said) no higher in Ireland than in other parts of the United Kingdom. A
pickpocket or a burglar is as easily convicted in Ireland as elsewhere;
the persons who lamentably enough are either left unpunished, or if
punished may count on popular sympathy, are criminals whose offences,
atrocious and cruel as they constantly are, are connected in popular
opinion with political, and at bottom, it must be added, with agrarian
questions. For more than a century there has existed an hereditary