Professor Dicey delivered last Thursday week, in Dublin, one of
the most impressive speeches against the Irish policy of the Government which we have read for many years. He first urged that the danger of the passing of a Home-rule measure for Ireland has never been so great as it is now. The House of Lords is a bulwark against it only so long as the country believes that the Lords really represent the English majority. If that belief once vanishes, the House of Lords will be no bulwark at all. it is idle to count on Mr. Gladstone's retirement. Mr. Gladstone may retire, but Glad- stonianism will not vanish with him. Apathy may often have a Conservative effect ; but it is impossible to rely on apathy when it is opposed to enthusiasm and a host of self-interested agitators. The only real reliance of the Unionists is the earnestness, enthusiasm, and self-denying energy of the Unionists, of whom Profeseor Dicey held up Mr. T. W. Russell as the one satisfactory example. He predicted that as the genius of Scotland never flowered till after the Union with Engkend had been finally sealed, so the genius of Ireland would never flower in its full beauty till after these agitating questions of disunion had been finally settled in the only safe fashion. The Unionists are the true Nationalists, for in fight- ing for a full and complete Union, they are drawing all the different sections of the country together, and establishing, therefore, those conditions of rest and confidence which best promote the blossoming of Irish, no less than of Scotch and English, genius. In a most eloquent peroration, Professor Dicey demanded that this great issue should be put separately to the people of the United Kingdom, and should not be mixed up with any other. The great duty of all Unionists was to make a sort of religion of their politics, and to turn their politics into a religion.
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