INTRODUCTION


Irish Unionists have pressed for a republication of _A Leap in the
Dark_. They hold that it will be of some service in their resistance to
the Coalition of Home Rulers, Socialists, and Separatists formed to
force upon the people of England and of Scotland a virtual dissolution
of the Union between Great Britain and Ireland. It would in any case
have been a pleasure to afford aid, however small, to the Irish
Unionists, whether Protestants or Catholics, engaged in the defence at
once of their own birthright and of the political unity of the United
Kingdom. Yet for a moment I doubted whether the republication of a
forgotten criticism of a forgotten Bill would be of essential service to
my friends. On reflection, however, I have come to see that, though the
Unionists of Ireland probably overrate the practical value of my book,
yet their hope of its serving the cause whereof they are the most
valiant defenders is based on sound reasons.

_A Leap in the Dark_ is a stringent criticism of the Home Rule Bill,
1893.[1] But the book has little to do with the details and intricacies
of that Bill. _A Leap in the Dark_ was published before the Home Rule
Bill of 1893 had reached the House of Lords, or had assumed that final
form, which made patent to the vast majority of British electors that a
measure which purported to give a limited amount of independence to
Ireland, in reality threatened England with political ruin. My criticism
is therefore in truth an attack upon the fundamental principles of Home
Rule, as advocated by Gladstone and his followers eighteen years ago.
These principles, moreover, have never been repudiated by the Home
Rulers of to-day. Some members of the present Cabinet, notably the Prime
Minister and Lord Morley, were the apologists of the Bill of 1893. In