Irish Nationalists in 1893.

Why, in the name of common sense, when Irish Nationalists are
absolute masters of the situation, should they demand lower payment
for their support than was offered to them twenty years ago when
the Home Rule majority was every day losing strength, when every
one knew that nothing but the show of moderation gave the slightest
chance of a Home Rule Bill escaping the veto of the House of Lords,
when every one, except perhaps Mr. Gladstone, foresaw that the next
General Election would give to Unionists a crushing majority? Every
advantage conceded in 1893 to Irish Separatists at the expense of
England will assuredly reappear in one form or another in the next
Home Rule Bill. Thus Ireland will, we may anticipate, under the
next Home Rule Bill send to the Parliament at Westminster at least
eighty members armed with the fullest legislative authority, so
that, to revive the language current eighteen years ago, Ireland
will govern and tax England whilst England will retain no right
either to govern or to tax Ireland.

_Thirdly_.--Every question to which in 1893 Gladstonians could
discover no answer satisfactory to Unionists or to the electorate
of Great Britain requires an answer in 1911 as much as in 1893. The
answer favourable to Home Rule has not as yet been discovered.

Is it possible to combine the effective supremacy of the Imperial
Parliament with Home Rule or the substantial legislative
independence of Ireland? Can Ireland, close to the shore of Great
Britain, occupy the position of a self-governing colony, such as
New Zealand, divided from Great Britain by thousands of miles of
sea? Is it possible to create, or even to imagine, a Court which