Professor Dicey made a good speech on Wednesday at the
Oxford Women's Liberal Unionist Association. He said that the cause of Unionism in Ireland was the cause of justice for the weak. Mr. Balfour had been the truest of Irish democrats in enforcing on Members of Parliament and powerful agitators the same responsibility for breaches of the law, which had previously been enforced chiefly against those whom it was considered safe and not unpopular to punish. As for the change which, according to Mr. Gladstone, had come over Ulster, and which had made the present generation loyal to the Union, when their grandfathers and great-grandfathers were hostile to it, that merely meant that a century of fairly wise and firm rule had reconciled the sturdiest Irishmen to the British government; whereas in the last century, when they had had no experience of such just and firm govern- ment, they were hostile to it. What Mr. Gladstone called degeneracy, therefore, Professor Dicey looked upon as evidence of the sound teaching of experience. What Ulster had already learned, he doubted not that the rest of Ireland would learn with a little longer experience of the blessings of the Union,— the one great old cause which was worth maintaining. That is good, sound, practical teaching. Professor Dicey com- pletely forgets the Professor in the earnestness of his political sagacity.
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