given them comfort and encouragement, will yield obedience to a law
which is the expression of the national will. Self-government in
Ireland means strong government, and strong government is the one cure
for Irish misery.

This train of reflection has, unless I am mistaken, convinced many
English Radicals that the installation of an Irish Ministry at Dublin
will be the dissolution of every secret society throughout Ireland, and
thus gained over to the cause of Home Rule men who detest anarchy even
more than they love liberty.

This belief in the virtues of self-government is confirmed by the
teaching of American critics, who hold that the recent experience of the
United States presents a clue by which Englishmen may find a path out of
the labyrinth of their present perplexities. Transactions known to every
citizen of the States show conclusively that the hatred of law which in
Ireland fills Englishmen with amazement has arisen among a people who,
whatever their faults, cannot be charged with those inherited vices
which English opinion freely and gratuitously imputes to Irish nature.
In Connecticut, in New York, in Georgia, throughout all the Southern
States, open or secret combinations, supported by public opinion and
enforcing its decrees by violence and murder, have with success defied
the law courts. Social conditions, and not the perversities of Irish
character, are seen to be the true cause of phenomena which, if they are
now a feature of Irish life, have appeared in countries where not an
Irishman was to be found, and where the Irish had no appreciable
influence. To this fact, which appears to me not to admit of question,
Americans add the consideration that lawlessness when supported by
public opinion has in America been successfully met, not by coercion,
but by yielding to public sentiment. Hence they draw the conclusion that