LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
IRELAND, LORD LANSDOWNE, AND MR. LONG. [TO TEE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."'
Slit,-I find it most difficult to go along with the Spectator as to the new policy of the Government. If Ireland is once partitioned, the grant of Home Rule loses all grace and savour for every Irishman everywhere, and I fear that an Ireland united at some later time is against all the teachings of history. West Virginia left her parent State over Secession, that parent State where lie the bones of George Washington, and no coaxing has ever brought her back. Nothing would induce the Italian colony of the Ticino to reunite with Italy. " Professor, my shirt is nearer than my coat," the Lugano cloth merchant said to Emile de Laveleye.
There is really a wicked attempt by a portion of the " Unionist" Press to throw the burden of the present crisis on Lord Lansdowne and Mr. Long. Their skirts at least are clear. The men who emascu- lated our Second Chamber promised in the preamble of the Bill to replace it with a more effective Chamber. They have, however, done nothing ; we have had years and years of " wait and see," and for lack of a Second Chamber to protect liberty and property—to do for Ulster what the Senate at Washington does for Texas and California—Ulster inevitably refuses to come into relations with Dublin. But show us a strong Second Chamber and Ulster will come in, and not-Ulster only but the Southern Unionists, ungrudgingly. Meanwhile until this mechanism can be set up let us be tender with the Sinn Feiners. The writer in a sense is of their philosophy. When explaining at a great public gather. ing at Cork more than four years ago why I was no longer a " Homo Ruler " I said, and to a kindly and considerate audience :—
" The laws under which we have lived hitherto were made by Parlia- ment ; but now the laws are no longer made by Parliament but by the House of Commons, and thus the law lacks a moral sanction for the citizen. That is what the Government has done ; it has nationalized anarchy. Two Estates of the Realm have violently coerced the Third. The Parliament Bill of last year was a great Coercion Bill. We are likely in future to require a police officer to watch each citizen. That is the real crime of 1911 ; is it then wonderful that our society has been shaken to its foundations ? "
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