ranks of our opponents--by the total absence of any clear conviction
or definite line whatever in the counsels of the Government, which
causes Ministers to dash wildly from measure to measure in
endeavouring to satisfy first one section and then another section of
their motley following, and which prevents them from ever giving
really adequate attention to any one of their proposals.

I am not speaking of Ministers individually. Granted that some of them
have done excellent work at the heads of their several departments--I
think it would not be fair to deny that. I am thinking of their
collective policy, and especially of their legislative efforts. For
monuments of clumsy opportunism, commend me to the legislative
failures, and, for the matter of that, to most of the legislative
achievements, of the last two years.

So far so good. Unionists cannot complain of what the Government is
doing for them. And on the negative side of policy--in their duty as
a mere Opposition--their course is clear. It is a fundamental article
of their faith to maintain the authority of the Imperial Parliament in
Ireland. But that authority can be set aside by the toleration of
lawlessness just as much, and in a worse way, than by the repeal of
the Union. And such toleration is the rule to-day. There may be no
violent crime, but there is open and widespread defiance of the law
and interference with the elementary rights of law-abiding people. It
is a demoralising state of affairs, and one to which no good citizen
in any part of the United Kingdom, however little he may be personally
affected by it, can afford to be indifferent. Once let it be granted
that any popular movement, which is not strong enough to obtain an
alteration of the law by regular means, can simply set the law aside
in practice, and you are at the beginning of general anarchy.