_The argument from the inconvenience to England._[27]--Apologies for Home Rule drawn from foreign experience, deference due to the popular will, from the historical failure of England to govern Ireland with success and the like, have about them when employed by English members of Parliament a touch of unreality; they are reasons meant to satisfy the hearer, but do not convince the speaker. When however we come to the argument for Home Rule drawn from the inconvenience of the present state of things to England generally, and to English members of Parliament in particular, we know at once that we are at any rate dealing with a real tangible serious plea which has (if anything) only too much weight with the person who employs it. There is nothing in the whole relation of England to Ireland about which politicians are so well assured, as that the presence of a body of Parnellites at Westminster is an unutterable nuisance, and works intolerable evil. Of the reality of their conviction we have the strongest proof. The sufferings of Irish tenants, the difficulties or the wrongs of Irish landlords, the evils of coercion, the terror of assassination, but slightly ruffled the composure with which English statesmen faced the perplexities of the Irish problem. They first began to think that the demand for Home Rule might have something in it when the refusal to erect a Parliament at Dublin meant the continuance of obstruction in the Parliament at Westminster. The terror of obstruction has to speak the plain truth, done more to effect the _bona fide_ conversion of English M.P.'s into advocates of Home Rule than any other single influence.