stupidities of any kind.  In addition we are handicapped on sea by the smallness of our official navy which, so far as I can gather, consists of the Granuaile, a pleasure-boat owned by the Congested Districts Board.  In land operations, we are still more seriously hampered by the non-existence of our army.  And although, in point of population, our numerical inferiority is so trivial as one to ten, even this slight disproportion may be regarded by an Irish Parliament as a fact not unworthy of consideration.

But we must not suffer ourselves to be detained any longer among these unrealities.  A Home Rule government will be loyal to the interests of its people, and actual circumstances demand, for the behoof of Great Britain and Ireland alike, an era of peace with honour, and friendship founded on justice.  The magnitude of the commercial relations between the two countries is inadequately appreciated.  Not merely is Great Britain our best customer, but we are her best customer.  The trade of Great Britain with Ireland is larger than her trade with India, and nearly twice as large as that with Canada or Australia.  And while these surprising figures are far from indicating the existence of a sound economic structure in Ireland, none the less, the industrial expansion that will follow Home Rule may be expected to alter the character rather than to diminish the value of the goods interchanged.  For if the development of textile, leather, shipbuilding, and other manufactures lessens the British import under these heads into Ireland, it will increase that of coal, iron, steel, and machinery.  And Ireland, without trenching on the needs of her home market, is capable of much more intensive exploitation as a food-exporting country.  Economically the two nations are joined in relations that ought to be relations of mutual profit, were they not eternally poisoned by political oppression.  With this virus removed, the natural balance of the facts of nature will spontaneously establish itself between the two countries.

The true desire of all the loud trumpeters of “loyalty” is, as it appears to me, of a very different order.  What they really ask is that Ireland should begin her career of autonomy with a formal act of self-humiliation.  She may enter the Council of Empire provided that she enters on her knees, and leaves her history outside the door as a shameful burden.  This is not a demand that can be conceded, or that men make on men.  The open secret of Ireland is that Ireland is a nation.  In days rougher than ours, when a blind and tyrannous England sought to drown the national faith of Ireland in her own blood as in a sea, there arose among our fathers men who annulled that design.  We cannot undertake to cancel the names of these men from our calendar.  We are no more ashamed of them than the constitutional England of modern times is ashamed of her Langtons and De Montforts, her Sidneys and Hampdens.  Our attitude in their regard goes beyond the reach