make quite sure what is its real nature. Does it depend mainly on agrarian, or mainly on political causes? On the true answer to this question must depend our right course of policy in Ireland.

There seems to be strong reason for the belief that agrarian grievances do, in fact, lie at the root, not only of Irish discontent, but of Irish disaffection to the law. The opposition to law which undoubtedly exists is not now, and never has been, general opposition to law, or even general opposition to English law. Pickpockets and burglars are not more numerous in Ireland than elsewhere, and are as easily convicted. The persons who either escape punishment, or if punished may count on popular sympathy, are criminals whose offences, atrocious and cruel as they commonly are, are connected in popular opinion with political, and at bottom with agrarian, questions.

The feeling of nationality on the other hand has played but a subordinate part in fomenting or keeping alive Irish discontent. The Home Rule movement never showed great strength till it became avowedly a Land League.

23. RESULT OF HISTORICAL ARGUMENT.

History then, if fairly interrogated, gives this result: Historical causes have generated in Ireland a condition of opinion which in all matters regarding the land impedes that enforcement of law which is the primary duty of every civilised government.

From this fact Home Rulers draw the inference that the law is hated because it is foreign, and that Englishmen should surrender to Irishmen the effort to enforce legal rights, since this duty is one which can be performed by a native, and cannot be performed by any English or foreign authority.

This conclusion is clearly not supported by the premises. If the source of popular discontent be agrarian, then the right course is to amend the land laws, while improving the administrative system, and enforcing justice between man and man. If, however, it could be shown that the passion for nationality really lay at the bottom of Irish discontent, the Home Rule argument would still be in a bad way; for if this be so, the demand must be satisfied (if at all) not by Home Rule, but by independence.

IV. FROM THE VIRTUES OF SELF-GOVERNMENT. Self-dependence is the source of self-reliance and of self-help. Leave Ireland to herself, say the Home Rulers, and Ireland will develop the sense of responsibility and the power of self-government. An Irish Prime Minister, they believe, would dare to be strong, because he knew himself to be popular; would punish conspirators with a severity unknown to English Governments; and seeing anarchy to be the bane of his country, would not tolerate disorder. Boycotters, moonlighters, dynamiters, and assassins would find themselves engaged in a contest with the will of the people, and being deprived of popular sympathy, would submit to a law which was felt to be the expression of the national will. Selfgovernment in Ireland means strong government, and strong government is the one cure for Irish misery. This line of thought has, I believe, won over to the cause of Home Rule many an English Radical, who detests anarchy even more than he loves liberty,

24. WHICH WOULD NOT BE CALLED OUT BY HOME RULE.

Once more it must be repeated that Home Rule is not National Independence nor anything like it. It is idle to suppose that the position of a member of a Confederacy, or that of a Colonial Dependency, would give to Irishmen the sense of independence or of responsibility which belongs to a self-governing nation.

Suppose, however, that the creation of an Irish Government and of an Irish Parliament did give to Ireland (even though still in many respects dependent on England) such a new sense of power and of responsibility as would enable her to create for herself a strong executive. Yet Government must be just as well as strong; and the question would remain whether rulers who had come to the head of affairs solely because they represented the strongest among many Irish factions or parties, would be able to rule with justice. If the power of England were exercised to restrain injustice, Ireland would not be in truth self-governed, and would not therefore reap the fruits of self-government. Yet England could not, under any arrangement short of actual separation, cease to be in some degree responsible for the maintenance of order in Ireland.

V. FROM THE NECESSITY FOR COERCION ACTS. Coercion Acts are popularly supposed to be enactments suspending the operation of ordinary law, and therefore conflicting with

the principles of the English Constitution. Order, we are told, has been maintained in Ireland since the Union chiefly by means of Coercion Acts, and it is the hope of getting rid of this unwelcome necessity which reconciles many Englishmen to the notion of Home Rule.

A lawyer is much tempted to dismiss all objections to Coercion Acts with the remark that since a law is merely a rule to which obedience is compelled by the power of the State, and Coercion is but another name for compulsory obedience, the objection to Coercion Acts is in reality an objection to law itself, or in fact to the existence of political society. We may, however, be sure that, however inaccurate the manner of its expression, the dislike to Coercion Acts entertained by sensible men represents a real conviction which we must try to understand. For this purpose we must carefully distinguish between the two distinct though closely connected ideas which it includes.

25. TWO REAL GROUNDS OF OBJECTION TO THEM.

(a) As being at Variance with Moral Sentiments.

In the first place, the word Coercion means any attempt to enforce a law among people whose moral sympathies are at variance with the law itself. Thus, to punish a ritualist for not conforming to the judgment of the Privy Council, to enforce vaccination at Leicester, to distrain upon a Quaker for tithes, to eject an Irish tenant from the farm he has occupied, to drag him into court and seize his goods if he does not pay his rent, to punish severely resistance to the sheriff's officer or the bailiff who gives effect to the rights of an Irish landlord, are proceedings which are commonly called either persecution or coercion, as the case may be. They certainly are proceedings of a very different kind from those by which common debtors are compelled to pay their debts, or thieves are prevented from picking pockets or breaking into houses. The difference lies in this-where the enforcement of the law is called Coercion," not only does the criminal think himself in the right, or at any rate think the law a wrongful law, but also the society to which he belongs holds that the law-breaker is maintaining a moral right against an immoral law. The anti-vaccinator is deemed a martyr at Leicester; the farmer who will not pay his rent is thought a patriot at Cork. Where the enforcement of the law is not popularly deemed Coercion, it is because the law-breaker does not suppose

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himself to be in the right, and still less do his associates think him morally praiseworthy. A thief does not in general hold any theory about the rightness of larceny, and there is no society, in the United Kingdom at least, who deny the moral validity of the eighth commandment.

(b) As being Dangerous to Liberty.

In the second place, Coercion means the enforcement of law by arbitrary and exceptional methods, which tend to diminish the securities for freedom possessed by ordinary citizens. Thus the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, the abolition of trial by jury, the introduction of peculiar rules of evidence to facilitate convictions for a particular class of crimes, a suspension (speaking generally) of what would be called in foreign countries "constitutional guarantees," in order to secure obedience to particular laws, would be called Coercion.

What is commonly called a Coercion Act, therefore, has one or both of the following characteristics;—either it enforces some rule of law which does not command the moral assent of the society or people amongst whom it is enforced, or else it constrains obedience to the law by some exceptional and arbitrary method.

Now the objection to such acts is, in a measure, founded on good sense. Laws derive three-fourths of their force, not from the fears of law-breakers, but from the assent of law-keepers; and legislation should, as a rule, correspond with the moral sentiment of the people. A law permanently at variance with wide moral feeling needs repeal or modification.

It is also true that exceptional and arbitrary legislation is always open to suspicion. If the Habeas Corpus Act be generally necessary for the protection of personal liberty, its suspension is, on the face of it, an evil. If it be undesirable that officers of the army should suddenly and without legal training be set to exercise the power of judges, then martial law is a great, though it may be an unavoidable, calamity.

26. HOW THESE OBJECTIONS SHOULD BE MET.

Laws which have received the odious name of Coercion Acts have frequently, though not always, been open to objection, on both the above grounds. The obvious conclusion is, that they should as much as possible be stripped of these odious characteristics.

A Coercion Act should in the first place be aimed, not so much at the direct enforcement of rules opposed to popular opinion, as at the punishment of offences which, though in some degree connected with dislike to an unpopular law, or to unpopular rights, are yet deeds in themselves condemned by the human conscience. Deliberate breaches of contract, insults to women and children, the murder or torture of witnesses who have given truthful evidence in support of a conviction for crime, or brutal cruelty to cattle, may be methods of popular vengeance, or used as sanctions to enforce an agrarian code; but one may feel certain that the man who breaks his word, who murders or tortures his neighbour or his neighbour's cattle, knows himself to be not only a criminal but a sinner, and that the law which condemns him to punishment, though it may excite temporary outcry, can rely on the ultimate sanction of the popular conscience.

A Coercion Act, in the second place, should as far as possible be neither a temporary nor an exceptional piece of legislation. The temporary character of Coercion Acts has needlessly increased their severity, and has at the same time deprived them of moral weight. It has increased their severity, because Parliament has allowed itself to be careless in fixing the limits of powers which were to last but a short time. It has deprived them of moral weight, because an Act which is law one year, and ceases to be law the next, can have neither the certainty nor the dignity which belongs to the permanent law of the land.

Coercion Acts again should be general, that is, they should apply, not to one part, but to the whole, of the United Kingdom. Powers needed by the Government for constant use in Ireland must at least occasionally be wanted for use in England or in Scotland. It would be foolish, indeed, to enable the Government to convict a dynamiter in Dublin, and to leave it powerless to convict the same criminal of the same offence because he has crossed to Liverpool. Coercion Acts should in the main give new stringency to the criminal procedure, and should not invade the liberties of ordinary citizens. Their object is to facilitate the punishment of wrongdoers, not to restrict the liberty of citizens who have not broken the law. A good Coercion Act might be applied to the whole of the United Kingdom, with no other result than that of making it a less pleasant residence than it now is for criminals and conspirators.