the vizor of Home Rule, these pages are not addressed; the position they
occupy is one of which no man has any cause to feel ashamed. The opinion
that, considering the misery which has marked the connection between
England and Ireland, the happiest thing for the weaker country would be
complete separation from the United Kingdom, is one which in common with
most Englishmen, and, it may be added, in common with the wisest foreign
observers, I do not share; but fairness requires the admission that it
is an opinion which a man may hold and may act upon, without incurring
the charge either of folly or of wickedness. To Nationalists, however,
these pages, as I have said, are not addressed. The persons for whom
they are intended are either Home Rulers, whether in Great Britain or in
Ireland, who _bonâ fide_ advocate the policy of Home Rule as a policy
good and wise in itself and for its own sake; or else Unionists, who
firmly believe that the whole State will suffer by any attempt to tear
up the Treaty of Union, but yet are unable to give for the faith that is
in them as strong grounds of reason as they would desire. To such
persons the importance of the principle (if true) which is contended for
throughout these pages must appear undeniable; it strikes at the root of
more than one half of the arguments by which Home Rulers from the time
of Mr. Butt to the days of Mr. Parnell have attempted, fairly enough,
and latterly with great success, to win over English opinion to their
cause, and it undermines the whole position occupied by Mr. Gladstone
and his English followers. They assume with undeniable truth that the
English people will not at the present moment, except under compulsion,
acquiesce in Irish independence; they further assume, and must from the
nature of the case assume, that Home Rule under one shape or another
presents a fair prospect at least of advantages not derivable from the
maintenance of the Union, and is at the very worst so much less
injurious to British interests than would be separation from Ireland, as
to offer to England a reasonable compromise between the just claims of