Home Rule | Page 3

and in every generation every great
human problem presents different aspects, and shows new lights and
shadows. Every great human question is like a great mountain which on
a second or third visit reveals new and unsuspected depths and heights,
new valleys and new peaks, slopes which new avalanches have

furrowed, and glaciers which have receded or advanced.
Not that the real, great, main outline ever changes. As with the
mountains, so with the great human problems; there are always certain
great features which remain permanent.
THE SEA
There are, for instance, in the Irish case the sixty-five miles of sea
which, since the earliest dawn of human memory, have divided Ireland
from Great Britain. A fact absurdly simple and obvious, but the greatest
feature of all in this mighty problem of human government!
"The sea forbids Union, and the Channel forbids Separation." There is
no change in that great physical condition. Those sixty-five miles of sea
have neither increased nor diminished since 1893. That sea is still too
broad for "Union"--in the Parliamentary sense of that word--and too
narrow for Separation.
To anyone standing on the deck of one of those swift steamships which
now cross to Ireland from so many points on the British coast, there
must, if he has any imagination, come some vision of the vast
impediment which this sea has placed in the way of direct control by
England over Ireland's domestic affairs. Looking back down the vista
of history, he must see a succession of fleets delayed by contrary winds,
of sea-sick kings and storm-battered convoys, of conquest thwarted by
the caprice of ocean, of peace messengers and high administrators
brought to anchor in the midst of their proud schemes.
The same causes still operate. In this respect, indeed, Ireland appears to
be simply one instance of a general law. It may almost be laid down as
an axiom that no nation can govern another across the sea. How often it
has been tried, and how often it has failed! France has tried it with
England, and England has tried it with France. Great Britain tried it
with North America, and Spain tried it with South. In this matter even
the great quickening of modern communications, even the miracles of
steam and electricity, seem to have made little difference. For even at
the present moment, if we look around, we shall see how great a part

the sea has played as the deciding factor in forms of government. It is
the sea which has made us give self-government to Canada, Australia,
and South Africa. It is the sea which keeps Newfoundland apart from
the Canadian Federation, and New Zealand apart from Australia. Even
within the scope of these islands the same law prevails. It is the sea
which makes us give self-government to the Isle of Man and the
Channel Islands. Almost the only exception is Ireland. In Ireland we
have defied this great law; and in Ireland that defiance is a failure.
And yet not defied it completely; for the very facts of Nature forbade.
While we have taken away the Irish Legislature, we have been obliged
to leave the Irish their separate laws, their separate Administration and
Estimates, and their separate Executive in Dublin. That Executive has
been for a whole century practically uncontrolled by any effective
Parliamentary check. The result is that it has grown, like some plant in
the dark, into such quaint and eccentric shapes and forms as to defy the
control of any Minister or any public opinion[6]. Perhaps the worst
condemnation of the Act of Union has been that while we destroyed the
Irish Parliament we have been obliged to leave Dublin Castle.
THE RACE
Then there is the permanent, abiding difference of Race. It is a truism
of history that the Englishman who settles in Ireland becomes more
Irish than the Irish. The records of the past are filled with great
examples. The Norman adventurers who spread into Ireland after the
Conquest have become in modern times the chiefs of great Irish
communities, until names like Joyce and Burke have come to be
regarded as typical Hibernian surnames. It is a commonplace of modern
history that the counties settled by Cromwellian soldiers have become
most typically Irish. Tipperary, Waterford, and Wexford--there were
great Cromwellian settlements in those counties. And yet they have
taken the lead in the fiercest insurrections of modern Irish democracy.
It is only in the North of Ireland, within the confines of the province of
Ulster, and there only in the extreme north-east corner, within the
counties of Londonderry, Antrim, and Down, that the settlers have
formed a distinct and definite racial breakwater against purely Irish

influences. The plantation of Ulster in the reign of James I. took into
Ireland some of the most dogged members