In order to understand Ireland we must begin by understanding England.
On no other terms will that complex of facts, memories, and passions,
which is called the Irish Question, yield up its secret. "You have
always been," said a Lady Clanricarde to some English politician, "like
a high wall standing between us and the sun." The phrase lives. It
reveals in a flashlight of genius the historical relations of the two
nations. It explains and justifies the principle adopted as the basis of
this discussion, namely, that no examination of the Irish Problem is
possible without a prior examination of the English mind. It used to be
said that England dearly loved a Lord, a dictum which may have to be
modified in the light of recent events. Far more than a Lord does the
typical Englishman love a Judge, and the thought of acting as a Judge.
Confronted with Ireland he says to himself: "Here are these Irish
people; some maintain that they are nice, others that they are nasty,
but everybody agrees that they are queer. Very good. I will study them
in a judicial spirit; I will weigh the evidence dispassionately, and
give my decision. When it comes to action, I will play the honest broker
between their contending parties." Now this may be a very agreeable way
of going about the business, but it is fatally unreal. Great Britain
comes into court, she will be pained to hear, not as Judge but rather as
defendant. She comes to answer the charge that, having seized Ireland as
a "trustee of civilisation," she has, either through incompetence or
through dishonesty, betrayed her trust. We have a habit, in everyday
life, of excusing the eccentricities of a friend or an enemy by the
reflection that he is, after all, as God made him. Ireland is
politically as Great Britain made her. Since the twelfth century, that
is to say for a great part of the Middle Ages and for the whole of the
modern period, the mind of England and not that of Ireland has been the
dominant fact in Irish history.