tic interest in the development of its young nationality. But our own affairs are nearer home, and call forth a still warmer interest. It is not our part to comment upon the exciting character of the present crisis in Ireland, which may have taken even more remarkable developments before these pages reach the public eye; but the work now before us has a more permanent claim upon our attention. Mr Dicey has made a notable experiment in the treatment of a political question by a purely scientific method.1 Among all the subjects of our day none has been more inextricably entangled among the passions, prejudices, and sentiments of races and factions than that of Home Rule, and if such a problem can be entirely isolated from the influence of party feelings, and solved by the rules of common-sense, experience and formal logic, there is no reason why the most knotty point of policy that ever divided the House of Commons or agitated the constituencies should not in the same manner, be cut by such a Q. E. D. as must close the mouth of even the

most obstinate stump-orator. If Mr Dicey's example be followed by the imitation which its success ought to secure, we might hope to see politics reduced to a science-made a branch of the ordinary education of our English youth; and such topics as the Franchise, Free Trade, or the Eastern Question simplified into primers for our elementary schools. But, apart from such utopian expectations, Mr Dicey's work Home Rule" is of the highest utility in pointing out the conclusion at which every right mind must ar

on

rive when the subject has been divested of all its adventitious envelopes of partisan feeling, national sentiment, traditional animosity, sympathy, expediency, and all other qualities which tend to obstruct the view.

We can only indicate in brief outlines the nature of the argument that Mr Dicey employs. Starting from the definition of Home Rule as a demand for an Irish Parliament with "habitual freedom" from the control of the Imperial or British Parliament, and an Irish Executive habitually responsible to the Irish people and its representatives, and showing that Home Rule does not mean either local self-government national independence, he proceeds to show that the strength of the movement in England depends "on a peculiar though not of necessity transitory state of opinion." The arguments of Home Rulers "derive at least half their power from their correspondence with dominant sentiments."

or

"That this is so is admitted by the now celebrated appeal from the classes to the masses. It is in its nature an appeal from a verdict likely to be pronounced by the understanding or the prejudicc of educated men to the emotions of the uneducated crowd. The appeal may or may not be justifiable. This is not the point for discussion; but the making of such an appeal necessarily implies that the existence of certain widespread feelings, is a condition requisite for full appreciation of the reasoning in support of Home Rule. The reasons may be good, but it is faith which gives them convincing power. They derive their cogency from a favouring

atmosphere of opinion or feeling."

This favouring atmosphere is

By A. V. Dicey, M. A. London:

pervaded not so much by democratic convictions as by democratic sentiment which is impervious to right reasoning and the logic of facts.

Mr Dicey goes over seriatim the principal English arguments in favour of Home Rule,-the argument from foreign experience, upon which Mr Gladstone laid so much stress, but which, when fairly looked at, presents itself rather in the light of a warning; the argument from the will of the Irish people-Mr Dicey, we suppose for the sake of consistency in his method of treatment, rates it at an importance much higher than it deserves-which is met by a statement that a majority of the electors of Great Britain, with a large proportion of the inhabitants of Ireland, are for the maintenance of the Union; the argumunt from Irish history, which has been so fully considered in this Magazine that we need not dwell upon it; the argument from the assumed virtues of self-government, which is vitiated by a reference to the social condition of Ireland, and a proof that " even in countries deeply imbued with the spirit of legality self-government has no necessary tendency to produce just government or just legislation; the argument from the necessity for Coercion Acts, which hardly deserves consideration as a plea; and lastly, the argument from inconvenience to England, which England by the exercise of a little firmness has it well within her power to remedy. Giving all due weight to these arguments, Mr Dicey demonstrates that they do not support a demand for Home Rule, however far they may go as against the maintenance of the Union or in favour of complete separation. As for Separation it

self, Mr Dicey thinks that while it does not involve more dangers than Home Rule, it presents more compensating advantages. He is not, however, able to take into account the fact that in the hands of an Irish Executive, independent of the Imperial Parliament, Home Rule in theory, would be Separation in practice, and that England would necessarily suffer not only from the disadvantages of the one, but from the dangers of the other.

Perhaps the most interesting discussion in Mr Dicey's volume is that which treats of Home Rule as Federalism, and which possesses a value over and above its applicability, to the demands of Ireland. If the efforts which are being made to stir up a Home Rule feeling in Scotland and Wales are not mere diversions in favour of the Separatist party in Parliament, and if they do derive any force from a prevailing "favouring atmosphere of democratic sentiment," it is highly important that the several units of Great Britain should endeavour to understand what their condition would be under a Federation. The disadvantages of a Federal scheme of Home Rule up

are thus summed

"First, the sovereignty of the Imperial Parliament would be distroyed, and all English constitutional arrangements would be dislocated; secondly, diminished; thirdly, the chance of the power of Great Britain would be further disagreement with Ireland would certainly not be diminished, and would probably be increased."

In short, a Federal scheme of Home Rule involves a revolution, without any compensating advantages to Great Britain, and with no prospect of substantial benefit towards Ireland.

THE task which I have undertaken in the present article is to describe the events which led up to the legislative union, on the first day of this century, between Great Britain and Ireland. These events form a part of the Unionist case, upon which Unionists have been too apt to let judgment go by default, while their opponents have been pressing the historical argument with all possible force.

"I am amazed at the deadness of vulgar opinion to the blackguardism and baseness-no words are strong enough which befoul the whole history of the Union."

So Mr Gladstone has written, in a phrase which he has since told was never meant for publication.

us

"Unspeakably criminal, I own, were the means by which the Union was brought about, and utterly insufficient were the reasons for its adoption." 1

This is the more decorus though scarcely less emphatic language of his latest manifesto.

Now, Unionists have been unduly apt to take these views of history for granted. They have been for the most part content to reply (what is perfectly true), that the historical argument has very little to do with the matter. The case of the Union must be judged, not according to the motives or actions of the men who supported it nearly a century ago, but by the standard of the welfare of the British Empire to-day. This argument is cogent, but the position is not satisfactory to those who are proud of the honour and the history of their country, and who

regard as a precious possession the good fame of the statesmen of previous generations, to whatever political party they may have belonged.

But the Unionist case may be placed much higher than this. There is nothing in the conduct of Pitt and Cornwallis to be ashamed of. What blackguardism and baseness is to be found, lies not in the conduct of those who forced on the Union, but of those

who extorted the highest possible price for falling in with it. The reasons that led to the Union were honourable and sufficient. The Act of Union put an end to a state of things that was a disgrace and a peril to the empire. Its enactments must be read, as Professor Dicey in his recent admirable work declares, "in the lurid light cast upon them by the rebellion of 1798." They must be read also in view of the death-struggle with France that was absorbing all the strength. of the country. As many frivolous and wicked motives have been ascribed to Mr Pitt as, in later times, to Mr Gladstone himself. But the memoirs and private correspondence of the time are now open to the world, and from these the truth shines out.

Pitt and Cornwallis were guided by two motives-the necessity of securing the country against French invasion, and the desire to protect Irish Roman Catholics against the fury of Irish Protestants. These were the motives which they laid before the country; these, as we see from their most private utterances were the motives that actu

ated themselves. The course which they took appeared to the country to be right and necessary; and looking back from this distance of time, it is hard to see that the country was wrong. Such is the view that I wish to present in this article.

In the first place, a short sketch of the salient features of the events which led up to the Union controversy will make the situation intelligible. During the first threequarters of the eighteenth century, Ireland lay under the weight of the severest penal laws against Catholics, and the heaviest commercial restriction on her industry. When we look back upon those laws, they appear altogether iniquitous. The marvel seems to be that Ireland remained as tranquil and peaceable under them as she did. But Ireland was not singular in regard to either of them. In England and Scotland there existed penal laws against Catholics even more savage than those of Ireland. It is true they were not enforced; but the furious Edinburgh and Glasgow riots of January 1779, and the more celebrated Gordon riots of 1780, caused by attempts to slighty relax them, showed how fully they had the sanction of the more ignorant public opinion. Again, the whole theory of the British Empire was, that the commercial interests of every part were to yield to those of Great Britain. Irishmen are apt to talk as if the prohibitions on wool and the other commercial restrictions on Irish trade were imposed out of some special hatred of Ireland; but Ireland was merely put in the same position as any of the Colonies or Dependencies. Scotland did not obtain commercial freedom till the Union; Ireland at the same price obtained similar freedom.

Nowadays, such restrictions are seen to do harm to the subject country quite incommensurate with the advantage to the superior country; but a hundred and fifty years ago it was a new idea to the Dependencies themselves that any other relationship was possible, and nothing was more hopeless-as Burke experienced at Bristolthan to persuade a commercial audience that the freedom of Ireland could fail to be the ruin of England.

But the revolt of the American Colonies against commercial restrictions of a similar nature roused Ireland from sleep. The Irish felt at once that the cause of the Continental was their own. The Presbyterians of the north, in particular, sympathised most strongly with them. Irish emigrants fought in the armies; and when the Continentals received hitherto unheardof commercial freedom, the Irish began to urge very strongly their case for similar remissions. In 1777 came that great British disaster, the surrender of Burgoyne at Saratoga, and in the next year followed the first considerable relaxation of the commercial restrictions and of the penal laws of Ireland. In the same year began the great Volunteer movement, the first symptoms and expression of independent vigour in the country. The city of Belfast was threatened with a visit from three or four privateers. British arms were so reduced, that the only defence which the Lord Lieutenant found himself able to offer consisted of "a troop or two of horse, or part of a company of invalids." Under these circumstances the inhabitants took up arms to defend themselves, and from this begin. ning sprang a great national movement, giving Ireland a unity and a conscious force which carried