This book, for which I have been asked to write a short preface,
presents the case against Home Rule for Ireland. The articles are
written by men who not only have a complete grasp of the subjects upon
which they write, but who in most cases, from their past experience and
from their personal influence, are well entitled to outline the Irish
policy of the Unionist Party.

Ours is not merely a policy of hostility to Home Rule, but it is, as it
has always been, a constructive policy for the regeneration of Ireland.

We are opposed to Home Rule because, in our belief, it would seriously
weaken our national position; because it would put a stop to the
remarkable increase of prosperity in Ireland which has resulted from the
Land Purchase Act; and because it would inflict intolerable injustice on
the minority in Ireland, who believe that under a Government controlled
by the men who dominate the United Irish League neither their civil nor
their religious liberty would be safe.

To create within the United Kingdom a separate Parliament with an
Executive Government responsible to that Parliament would at the best
mean a danger of friction. But if we were ever engaged in a great war,
and the men who controlled the Irish Government took the view in regard
to that war which was taken by the same men in regard to the Boer War;
if they thought the war unjust, and if, as under the last Home Rule
Bill they would have the right to do, they passed resolutions in the
Irish Parliament in condemnation of the war, and even sent embassies
carrying messages of good-will to our enemy, then this second Government
at the heart of the Empire would be a source of weakness which might be
fatal to us.