LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
1.11.b CONVERSION OF IRISH .P.b.NALING.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR:1 SIR,—To many, as to myself, who in old days used to value the Spectator for its quick and sure apprehension of the higher and finer aspects of political issues, it must be surprising to find you still uninfluenced by a fact which might, indeed, have been foreseen from a knowledge of the Irish character, but which cannot much longer be sincerely
questioned except by very obstinate prejudice. Whatever other objections may furnish the fringe of the adverse argument, no one, I think, can deny that the opposition to Irish self4 government is rooted in a conviction of the hostility of the great majority of the Irish people to this country, and to the Imperial connection. But that conviction has now, I submit, become a mere "survival" It is too much a tradition and presupposition in many English minds to go down at once before the evidences of a changed disposition; and in a race so slow itself to change its sentiments as is the English, the con- vertive force of Mr. Gladstone's policy must needs, for a time, be exposed to doubt and suspicion. Yet we all know the fable of the rival efforts of sun and wind to strip the wayfarer of his coat, and how warmth and geniality prevailed, after the con- spicuous failure of the other method. And race sometimes differs from race, as sex from sex, the Irish character having in it a feminine quality, as the English is distinctly masculine,— a consideration which has this among other applications, that we should not note too gravely wild words and passionate sentiments provoked by acknowledged ill-treatment, as evi- dence of a disposition not to be altered by justice, or, if you take exception to that term, by sympathy and trust. The English people are not likely long to confound Irish antagonism to a government of coercion with hostility to themselves as a nation, the distinotion becoming daily more and more apparent. But surely it is time for the leaders of anti-Home-rule opinion to recognise the new fact in the situation which has arisen since their opposition began, that once again in human experience, and on a large scale, has asserted itself the great spiritual law that sympathy is the strongest of all forces in the relations of mankind, and that conversion is more powerful, as well as more lovely, than coercion. But I know it is a "large order" to ask you to admit the fact in this case, for it means that the "Separatist tendency has ceased to exist in Ireland, owing to the action of Mr. Gladstone and of the bulk of the Liberal Party in this country.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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