A Home Ruler may, however, if hard driven, say that my interpretation of
history is erroneous, and that a hatred to English law, and to all
things English, and not a special dislike to the land law, is the
sentiment which prevails over every other feeling of the Irish people.
It is difficult to me to see how this view can be seriously maintained.
Let us grant however for a moment that Home Rulers are right, and that
millions of Irishmen are inspired with the passion of nationality. Even
on this supposition the Home Rule doctrine stands in a bad way. If the
demand of the Irish people be like that of the Italian people--a demand
for recognised nationality--then the demand must be satisfied, if at
all, not by Home Rule, but by independence. The most eminent among
English Home Rulers believes that the law is hated in Ireland because it
comes before the Irish people in a foreign garb. Mr. Froude in substance
agrees in this matter with Mr. Gladstone, since he holds that "the real
grievance is our presence in Ireland at all." But the eminent statesman
and the distinguished historian draw a different inference from the same
premises. Mr. Gladstone infers that Ireland can be satisfied by
semi-independence. Mr. Froude infers that if we are to meet Irish wishes
we must let Ireland be free. Mr. Froude's logic will be to most persons
far more intelligible than the logic of the Liberal leader. Here, at
any rate, we come to the true issue suggested by the phenomena of Irish
history. Is Irish discontent due in the main to agrarian or to political
causes? On the answer to this enquiry depends, as far as the argument we
have in hand goes, the line of right policy in Ireland. But neither
answer favours the contention of Home Rulers.[20]

The argument from Irish history gives rise to, or, more properly
speaking, contains in itself two further distinct lines of reasoning in
favour of Home Rule, each of which supplements the other. The first of