Professor Dicey delivered a powerful address at Glasgow on Tuesday
night to the members of the Radical Union, on the moral aspects of the issue between the Unionists and the Home- rulers. He insisted that so far as nationality involved only pride in a particular type of character and gifts, no one grudged it to the Irish any more than they grudged it to the Scotch; but that free development of nationality of this kind does not involve Home-rule for Ireland more than it involves Home- rule for Scotland. Sir Walter Scott was the great writer who had done more than any man to glorify the national genius of Scotland, and yet, as every one knows, he was no pleader for Scotch Home-rule in the sense in which the Irish demand it. The notion that Christianity demanded the con- cession of Home-rule to Ireland was just as false as the notion that Christianity demands the concession of such rule to Lom- bardy. The Home-rulers plead for Home-rule on the ground on which Italians pleaded for the independence of Italy; but if you come to insist that it is monstrous and impossible to grant inde- pendence to Ireland in the sense in which Italian independence has been gained by Italy, they repudiate asking for it, and yet do not repudiate arguments which have no application except to the cause of national independence. But the real issue had grown to be the issue between lawless sentiment and constitutional order, and the only party which was really formidable now on the side of Home-role was the party which pleads for rioters and contract-breakers as if they were patriots and martyrs. Professor Dicey defended the Crimes Act as a measure which sustains liberty and punishes only those who are striking at the springs of civilisation.
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