The best conceivable result of Home Rule is that it may detach Irishmen from interest in English politics, and induce the most respected and respectable men in Ireland to take matters into their own hands and manage for themselves all strictly Irish affairs. For the last twenty years, at least, Ireland has been represented, or misrepresented, by eighty and more politicians, nominated in the main by Mr. Parnell. No one supposes for a moment that the Nationalist leaders who appeared before and were condemned by the Special Commission are fair samples of the Irish people. They are, take them at their best, reckless agitators. They were chosen by their patron, Mr. Parnell, not on account of their worth or talent, but because they were apt instruments for carrying out a policy of parliamentary intrigue, reinforced by a system of lawless oppression.[37] These men are the product of a revolutionary era; they no more represent the virtues and the genius of the Irish people than the demagogues or fanatics of the Jacobin Club represented the genius and the virtues of the French nation. We all know that Ireland abounds in citizens of a very different stamp. She has never lacked among her sons, and does not lack now, men of virtue, of vigour, and of genius. Throughout the length and breadth of the country you will find hundreds of men of merit--landlords whose lives have been honourable to themselves, and a blessing to their tenants; merchants as honest and successful as any in England or in Scotland; small landowners and tenant farmers who have paid their rent and paid their way, who have cultivated their land, who have never insulted or boycotted their neighbours, and have never been driven by intimidation into meanness and fraud. Add to these lawyers, thinkers, writers, and scholars, who rival or excel the best representatives of their class in other parts of the United Kingdom. These good men and true are not peculiar to any one creed or party; they are not confined to any one province, or to any one class; they are scattered through every part of the land; they are the true backbone of Ireland; they have saved her from utter ruin; they may still by their energy raise her to prosperity. But they have been thrust out of politics by the talkers, the adventurers, the conspirators. It is possible that if Home Rule compels Irishmen to turn their whole minds to Irish affairs, the so-called representatives who misrepresent their country may be dismissed from the world of politics, and the Parliament at Dublin be filled with members who, whether they come from the North or from the South, whether Unionists or Home Rulers, whether Roman Catholics or Protestants, whether landowners, tenant farmers, ministers of religion, merchants, or tradesmen, represent the real worth and strength of the country. If this should happen, Home Rule would still entail great evils on the whole United Kingdom. But even zealous