Now you bid us surrender our own judgment, ignore our own responsibility, and blindly pass a Bill which we, who have studied these university questions as they affect both Ireland and England, believe to be thoroughly mischievous to the prospects of higher education in Ireland, only because the Irish members, as you say, desire it. Do one thing or the other. Either give them the power and the responsibility, or leave both with the Imperial Parliament. You are now asking us to surrender the power, but to remain still subject to the responsibility. We will not bear the latter without the former. We shall prefer Home Rule." Needless to add that this device--a sample of the petty sops by which successive generations of English statesmen, Whigs and Tories alike, have sought to win over a priesthood which uses and laughs at them--failed as completely as its predecessors to settle the University question or to range the bishops on the side of the Government. The autumn and winter of 1881 revealed the magnitude of the mischief done by making a Coercion Bill precede a Relief Bill. The Land Bill was the largest concession made to the demands of the people since Catholic Emancipation. It was a departure, justified by necessity, but still a departure from our established principles of legislation. It ought to have brought satisfaction and confidence, if not gratitude, with it; ought to have led Ireland to believe in the sincere friendliness of England, and produced a new cordiality between the islands. It did nothing of the kind. It was held to have been extorted from our fears; its grace and sweetness were destroyed by the concomitant severities which the Coercion Act had brought into force, as wholesome food becomes distasteful when some bitter compound has been sprinkled over it. We were deeply mortified at this result of our efforts. What was the malign power which made the boons we had conferred shrivel up, "like fairy gifts fading away"? We still believed the Coercion Act to have been justified, but lamented the fate which baffled the main object of our efforts, the winning over Ireland to trust the justice and the capacity of the Imperial Parliament. And thus the two facts which stood out from the history of this eventful session were, first, that even in legislating for the good of Ireland we were legislating against the wishes of Ireland, imposing on her enactments which her representatives opposed, and which we supported only at the bidding of the Ministry; and, secondly, that at the end of a long session, entirely devoted to her needs, we found her more hostile and not less disturbed than she had been at its beginning. We began to wonder whether we should ever succeed better on our present lines. But we still mostly regarded Home Rule as a disagreeable solution.