late in the day you enact in shreds and fragments a programme of reform
proposed half a century before by the leaders of the Irish people.
To-day rural Ireland is convalescent, but it is absurd to rate her if
she does not at once manifest all the activities of robust health. It is
even more absurd to expect her to glow with gratitude.

You muddled our whole system of transportation; your muddle stands
to-day in all its ruinous largeness unamended, and, it may be, beyond
amendment. You muddled the Poor Law; and, in the workhouses which you
thrust upon us, 8000 children are year by year receiving on their lives
the brand of degradation. You marred education, perverting it into a
discipline of denationalisation, and that virus has not yet been
expelled.

What economic, what intellectual problem in Ireland have you not marred
and muddled, England, my England (as the late Mr W.E. Henley used to
say)? You have worsened the maledictions of the Bible. The sins of
_your_ fathers will lie as a _damnosa hæreditas_, a damnable heritage,
upon the mortgaged shoulders of _our_ children. It is better, as Plato
taught, to suffer injustice than to inflict it. In the light of that
ethical principle you are long since judged and condemned. But with the
customary luck of England you are allowed what others were not allowed,
the opportunity of penitence and reform. The messengers of the new
gospel are at your doors, offering you in return for the plain rudiments
of justice not only forgiveness but friendship. It is for you to accept
or reject. We, the Irish, whom you have wronged, look to your decision
with interest rather than with concern. Why should we be concerned? Our
flag has been an Aaron's serpent to swallow yours. Your policies, your
ambitions, your administrations have passed by us like the transient and
embarrassed phantoms that they were. We remain. All the roads lead to