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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 of the Scotch race, men filled with the new fire of the Reformation, men stalwart for their race and creed. They went as conquerors and as confiscators, and for centuries they worked with arms in their hands. They slew and were slain, and were divided from the native Irish by an overflowing river of blood. That river is not yet bridged.
It has been said that there is no human hatred so great as that felt towards men whom one has wronged. The