whom Gladstonians call the Irish people, but to every Irishman who is
bidden by Gladstonians to consider himself a member of the Irish nation.

The Irish are a martial race; they excel in the practice, and delight in
the pageantry, of warfare, but they are forbidden to raise a regiment or
man a gunboat. They cannot legally raise a regiment of volunteers, they
cannot save their country from invasion. Will they permanently acquiesce
in restraints not imposed on the Channel Islands? Irishmen, Unionists no
less than Home Rulers, are mostly Protectionists, and believe that
tariffs may give to Ireland, not indeed a 'plethora of wealth,' for of
this no man out of Bedlam except Mr. Gladstone dreams, but reasonable
prosperity. Vain to argue that Protection is folly. Englishmen think so,
and Englishmen are right. But English doctrine is not accepted in
Germany, in France, in the United States, or in the British Colonies;
why should Irishmen be wiser than the inhabitants of every civilised
country, except England? The fact, in any case, cannot be altered that
most Home Rulers are Protectionists, and that many of them desire Home
Rule mainly because they desire Protection for Ireland. Yet Protection,
at any rate in the form of a tariff, they cannot have.[84] Take again
the Restrictions imposed on the endowment of religion. All English
Nonconformists, and many English Churchmen, hold these Restrictions to
be in themselves politic and just. But the one strong reason for the
concession of Home Rule is that Irishmen disagree with English notions
of policy and of justice. No one can assign any reason why Irish
statesmen, Catholics or Protestants, might not feel it a matter of duty
or of policy to endow the priesthood, to level up instead of levelling
down, to enter into some sort of concordat with Rome. It is a policy
which is distasteful to English Nonconformists and to most Irish
Protestants. But under a system of Home Rule, at any rate, English
Nonconformists have no right to dictate the policy of Ireland. There is