and especially the problems of Irish rural life, as so unique that only a Parliament sitting in Dublin can hope to solve them satisfactorily.  As a matter of fact, the rural question in Ireland is, in most of its essential features, very similar to the rural question in other countries, of which Denmark is perhaps the best example; and the methods which have been successful there are already proving successful here.  Single ownership of the land by the cultivator; State aid, encouraging and supplemementing co-operation and self-help; co-operation and self-help providing suitable opportunities for the fruitful application of State aid—­these are the principles by which Unionist legislation for Ireland has been guided, and they are the principles which any wise legislation must follow, whether it emanate from an Irish or from the Imperial Parliament.  Indeed, if there is anything “unique” in the Irish case, it is the deep division of sentiment inherited from the unhappy history of the country and reinforced by those differences of race and creed to which I have already alluded as making two Irelands out of one.  But the remedy for this is not to cut Ireland adrift and leave the two sections to fight it out alone, but rather to maintain the existing constitution as the best guarantee that the balance will be held even between them.

Sir Horace Plunkett has well summed up the real needs of rural Ireland in the formula “better farming, better business, better living.”  He has himself done more than any other single man to bring the desired improvement about.  I am not ashamed to acknowledge myself his disciple, and in the measures for which I was responsible during my time in Ireland, I ever kept the practical objects for which he has striven steadily in view.  In a speech which I made shortly after taking office I used the phrase “killing Home Rule with kindness.”  This phrase has been repeatedly quoted since, as if it had been a formal declaration on the part of the incoming Irish Government that to “kill Home Rule” was the Alpha and the Omega of their policy.  What I really said was that we intended to promote measures having for their object an increase in the material prosperity of the country; that if we could thereby kill Home Rule with kindness, so much the better; but that the policy stood on its own merits, irrespective of any ulterior consequences.

In my view that is the only true attitude for a Unionist Government to take up.  But in our efforts to improve material conditions and to remove grievances, how small is the encouragement or help that we have received from leaders of the Nationalist Party!  “Their aim,” said Goldwin Smith long ago, “has always been to create a Nationalist feeling, which would end in political separation, not the redress of particular wrongs and grievances, or the introduction of practical improvements.”  I should imagine that there has seldom, if ever, been an important political party which has exhibited so little constructive ability