Look at the Boers, don't you know. Not half such a decent sort as
the Irish. Look at Irish horses, too. Eh? What?

But this, he is conscious, would hardly suit the occasion. He therefore
amends it thus:--

Mr Chairman--er--as regards the financial proposals of His Majesty's
Government, I am of the deliberate--er--opinion that our national
security--I may say, our Imperial security--our security as--er--a
governing people--lies in trusting the Irish as we did in the--er
--case of the Boers--H'm Mr Gladstone, Mr Chairman--Mr Chairman, Mr
Gladstone----

and so on. You perceive that the style is actually worse than in the
sample quoted before; it has become flabby whereas that other was at any
rate nervous? But now suppose that, having practised it, our candidate
was able to speak like this:--

'But what (says the Financier) is peace to us without money? Your plan
gives us no revenue.' No? But it does--for it secures to the subject
the power of Refusal, the first of all Revenues. Experience is a cheat,
and fact is a liar, if this power in the subject of proportioning his
grant, or of not granting at all, has not been found the richest mine
of Revenue ever discovered by the skill or by the fortune of man. It
does not indeed vote you 152,750 pounds 11 shillings 2 3/4 pence, nor
any other paltry limited sum--but it gives you the strong box itself,
the fund, the bank, from whence only revenues can arise among a people
sensible of freedom: _Positâ luditur arcâ_.... Is this principle to be
true in England, and false everywhere else? Is it not true in Ireland?
Has it not hitherto been true in the Colonies? Why should you presume