by one of the many specious reasons now approved, we put the principle by, and before long we are at one another’s throats about things involving no principle.  It is not necessary to particularise.  Note any meeting for the same general conditions:  a chairman, indecisive, explaining rules of order which he lacks the grit to apply; members ignoring the chair and talking at one another; others calling to order or talking out of time or away from the point; one unconsciously showing the futility of the whole business by asking occasionally what is before the chair, or what the purpose of the meeting.  This picture is familiar to us all, and curiously we seem to take it always as the particular freak of a particular time or locality; but it is nothing of the kind.  It is the natural and logical result of putting by principle and trying to live away from it.  Yet, that is what we are doing every day.  It means we lack collectively the courage to pursue a thing to its logical conclusion and fight for the truth realised.  If we are to be otherwise as a body, it will only be by personal discipline training for the wider and greater field.  We must get a proper conception of the great cause we stand for, its magnitude and majesty, and that to be worthy of its service we must have a standard above reproach, have an end of petty proposals and underhand doings, be of brave front, resolute heart, and honourable intent.  We must all understand this each in his own mind and shape his actions, each to be found faithful in the test.  In fine, if in private life there is need for developing the great virtues requisite for public service, even more is it necessary in public life to develop the courage, patience and wisdom of the soldier and the statesman.

V

A concrete case will give a clearer grasp of the issue than any abstract reasoning.  Our history, recent and remote, affords many examples of the abandoning by our public men of a principle, to defend which they entered public life; and our action on such an occasion is invariably the same—­to regard the delinquent as simply a traitor, to load him with invective and scorn and brand him for ever.  We never see it is not innate wickedness in the man, but a weakness against which he has been untrained and undisciplined, and which leaves him helpless in the first crisis.  Ireland has recently been incensed by the action of some of her mayors and lord mayors in connection with the English Coronation festival; the feeling has been acute in the metropolis.  Certain things are obvious, but how many see what is below the surface?  Let me suggest a case and a series of circumstances; the more pointed the case, the more interesting.  I will suppose a particular mayor is an old Fenian:  let us see how for him a web is finely woven, and in the end how securely he is netted.  First a mayor is a magistrate, and must take the judicial oath, but the old Fenian has taken an oath of allegiance