administration resulting from that system is costly, inefficient,
unhandy beyond all description: a mighty staff of officials and
police; a people desperately poor; taxation which rises automatically
with every increase in the expenditure of this vast and wealthy
island; and a population which dwindles tragically year by year. Add
to all this a loyalist caste, capable and well-organised, who are
taught generation after generation to look for support not to their
own countrymen, but to external force derived from across the sea.
There exists in effect in Ireland at the present time almost exactly
the same situation which would have grown up in South Africa, if we
had not had the wit and the nerve to prevent it. Take the whole of
this situation as I have described it, thrust it into the arena of
British politics to be the centre of contending factions, and the
panorama of Irish government is complete.

With these facts before us, upon the authority of men like Lord
Dunraven, Sir Joseph West-Ridgeway, Sir Antony MacDonnell, Lord
Dudley, and others who have served the Crown in Ireland--is it
wonderful that we should refuse to turn our eyes away from the vision
of that other Ireland, free to control her own destiny in all that
properly concerns herself, free to devote the native genius of her
people to the purposes of her own self-culture--the vision of that
other Ireland which Mr. Gladstone had reserved as the culminating
achievement of his long and glorious career? Is it wonderful that we
should refuse to turn our eyes away from that? No; I say that the
desire and the aim of making a national settlement with Ireland on
lines which would enable the people of that country to manage their
own purely local affairs, is not an aim that can be separated from the
general march of the Liberal army. If I come forward on your platform
here at Dundee it is on the clear understanding that I do not preclude