Irretrievable mistakes may be made by too long a gamble with the chances
of political warfare. Whatever the scheme produced, the extremists will
have to oppose it tooth and nail. If the measure is big, sound, and
generous, it will be necessary to attack its best features with the
greatest vigour; to rely on beating up vague, anti-separatist sentiment
in Great Britain; to represent Irish Protestants as a timid race forced
to shelter behind British bayonets; in short, to use all the arguments
which, if Irish Unionists were compelled to frame a Constitution
themselves, they would scorn to employ, and which, if grafted on the Act
in the form of amendments, they themselves in after-years might
bitterly regret. Conversely, if the measure is a limited one, it will be
necessary to commend its worst features; to extol its eleemosynary side
and all the infractions of liberty which in actual practice they would
find intolerably irksome. Whatever happens, things will be said which
are not meant, and passions aroused which will be difficult to allay on
the eve of a crisis when Ireland will need the harmonious co-operation
of all her ablest sons.

If, behind the calculation of a victory within the next two years, there
lies the presentiment of an eventual defeat, let not the thought be
encouraged that a better form of Home Rule is likely to come from a Tory
than from a Liberal Government. Many Irish Unionists regard the prospect
of continued submission to a Liberal, or what they consider a
semi-Socialist, Government as the one consideration which would
reconcile them to Home Rule. No one can complain of that. But they make
a fatal mistake in denying Liberals credit for understanding questions
of Home Rule better than Tories. That, again, is a matter of proved
experience. Compare the abortive Transvaal Constitution of 1905 with the
reality of 1906, and measure the probable consequences of the former by
the actual results of the latter. Let them remember, too, that every