I am conscious that I ought to make some kind of apology
for rushing into print on a subject which I do not
half know. But I do know just a little more than
I did when I was an ardent Home Ruler, influenced by
the seductive charm of sentiment and abstract principle
only; and I think that perhaps the process by which
my own blindness has been couched may help to clear
the vision of others who see as I did. All of
us lay-folk are obliged to follow the leaders of those
schools in politics, science, or religion, to which
our temperament and mental idiosyncracies affiliate
us. Life is not long enough for us to examine
from the beginning upwards all the questions in which
we are interested; and it is only by chance that we
find ourselves set face to face with the first principles
and elemental facts of a cause to which, perhaps,
as blind and believing followers of our leaders, we
have committed ourselves with the ardour of conviction
and the intemperance of ignorance. In this matter
of Ireland I believed in the accusations of brutality,
injustice, and general insolence of tyranny from modern
landlords to existing tenants, so constantly made by
the Home Rulers and their organs; and, shocking though
the undeniable crimes committed by the Campaigners
were, they seemed to me the tragic results of that
kind of despair which seizes on men who, goaded to
madness by oppression, are reduced to masked murder
as their sole means of defence—and as,
after all, but a sadly natural retaliation. I
knew nothing really of Lord Ashbourne’s Act;
and what I thought I knew was, that it was more a
blind than honest legislation, and did no vital good.
I thought that Home Rule would set all things straight,
and that the National Sentiment was one which ought
to find practical expression. I rejoiced over
every election that took away one seat from the Unionists
and added another vote to the Home Rulers; and I shut
my eyes to the dismemberment of our glorious Empire
and the certainty of civil war in Ireland, should
the Home Rule demanded by the Parnellites and advocated
by the Gladstonians become an accomplished fact.
In a word I committed the mistakes inevitable to all
who take feeling and conviction rather than fact and
knowledge for their guides.
Then I went to Ireland; and the scales fell from my
eyes. I saw for myself; heard facts I had never
known before; and was consequently enlightened as
to the true meaning of the agitation and the real
condition of the people in their relation to politics,
their landlords, and the Plan of Campaign.
