LONDON:METHUEN & CO.,18, BURY STREET, W.C.
1890.
I am conscious that I ought to make some kind of apology for rushinginto print on a subject which I do not half know. But I do know just alittle more than I did when I was an ardent Home Ruler, influenced bythe seductive charm of sentiment and abstract principle only; and Ithink that perhaps the process by which my own blindness has beencouched may help to clear the vision of others who see as I did. Allof us lay-folk are obliged to follow the leaders of those schools inpolitics, science, or religion, to which our temperament and mentalidiosyncracies affiliate us. Life is not long enough for us to examinefrom the beginning upwards all the questions in which we areinterested; and it is only by chance that we find ourselves set faceto face with the first principles and elemental facts of a cause towhich, perhaps, as blind and believing followers of our leaders, wehave committed ourselves with the ardour of conviction and theintemperance of ignorance. In this matter of Ireland I believed in theaccusations of brutality, injustice, and general insolence of tyrannyfrom modern landlords to existing tenants, so constantly made by theHome Rulers and their organs; and, shocking though the undeniablecrimes committed by the Campaigners were, they seemed to me the tragicresults of that kind of despair which seizes on men who, goaded tomadness by oppression, are reduced to masked murder as their solemeans of defence—and as, after all, but a sadly natural retaliation.I knew nothing really of Lord Ashbourne's Act; and what I thought Iknew was, that it was more a blind than honest legislation, and did novital good. I thought that Home Rule would set all things straight,and that the National Sentiment was one which ought to find practicalexpression. I rejoiced over every election that took away one seatfrom the Unionists and added another vote to the Home Rulers; and Ishut my eyes to the dismemberment of our glorious Empire and thecertainty of civil war in Ireland, should the Home Rule demanded bythe Parnellites and advocated by the Gladstonians become anaccomplished fact. In a word I committed the mistakes inevitable toall who take feeling and conviction rather than fact and knowledge fortheir guides.
Then I went to Ireland; and the scales fell from my eyes. I saw formyself; heard facts I had never known before; and was consequentlyenlightened as to the true meaning of the agitation and the realcondition of the people in their relation to politics, theirlandlords, and the Plan of Campaign.
The outcome of this visit was two papers which were written for theNew Review—with the editor of whom, however, I stood somewhat inthe position of Balaam with Balak, when, called on to curse theIsraelites, he was forced by a superior power to bless them. So I withthe Unionists. The first paper was sent and passed, but it was delayedby editorial difficulties through the critical months of thebye-elections. When published in the December number, owing to theexigencies of space, the backbone—namely the extracts from the LandActs, now included in this re-publication—was taken out of it, and myown unsupported stateme