Parliament are the proper agents. For this work they, and they alone,
are fit. The quiet, industrious, stay-at-home merchants or lawyers, who
might be sent to Dublin for a month or two in the year to manage Irish
business on business-like principles, will not be sent to Westminster to
hold the balance between English parties. They cannot leave their
every-day work; were they willing to forsake their own business, they
are not the men to conduct with success the parliamentary game of brag,
obstruction, and finesse. Keep, in short, the Irish members at
Westminster, and you ensure the supremacy in Ireland of professional
politicians. By a curious fatality the Gladstonian policy which weakens
England ruins Ireland. Let no one fancy that this is the delusion of an
English Unionist. Sir Gavan Duffy is an Irish Nationalist of a far
higher type than the men who have drawn money from the Clan-na-Gael. In
'48 he was a rebel, but if he was disloyal to England, he was always
careful of the honour and character of Ireland. He, at least, perceives
the danger to his country of retaining Irish members in a Parliament
where they had ceased to have any proper place. 'For my own part,' he
says, 'I should not care if they did not attend [the Imperial
Parliament] for a generation, which will be needed for the manipulation
of their own affairs.'

All this, I shall be told, is prophecy; Gladstonian hopes are as
reasonable as Unionist fears. So be it. But in this matter my
predictions have a special claim on the attention of the Ministry, they
coincide with the forecast, or the foresight, of the present[40] Chief
Secretary for Ireland.

'Let us suppose that these Irish representatives for Imperial purposes
are not chosen by the legislative body, but are chosen directly by Irish
constituencies. You have already, according to our plan, two sets of