That is the usual patter of the self-satisfied Separatist, who, having delivered himself, looks around him with an air which seems to say--"What a fine fellow I am, how generous, fair, disinterested. Have I not a noble soul? Did you ever see such magnanimity? Can anybody say anything against such sentiments? Thank heaven that I am not as other men, nor even as this Unionist." He is plausible, but no more. The mob which applauds the hero and hisses the villain of a melodrama pats him on the back, while he looks upward with his hand on his heart and a heaven-is-my-home expression in his eye. Put him under the microscope--he needs it, and you will see him as he is. The platitudes in which he lives, and moves, and has his being have no foundation in fact. His talk is grand, but it lacks substance. It is magnificent, but it is not sense. Listen to what a statesman has said:-- "I have looked in vain for the setting forth of any practical scheme of policy which the Imperial Parliament is not equal to deal with, and which it refuses to deal with, and which is to be brought about by Home Rule." "There is nothing Ireland has asked, and which this country and this Parliament has refused. This Parliament has done for Ireland what it would have scrupled to do for England or Scotland." "What are the inequalities of England and Ireland? I declare that I know none, except that there are certain taxes still remaining, which are levied over Englishmen and Scotchmen, and which are not levied over Irishmen; and, likewise, that there are certain purposes for which public money is freely and largely given in Ireland, and for which it is not given in England and Scotland." I read this deliverance to my Gladstonian friend, who was staggered to learn upon incontrovertible evidence, to wit, the printed report of his speech, that these were the publicly expressed opinions of the Grand Old Man, whose pandering to Irish opinion as expressed by outrage dates from the time of the Clerkenwell explosion. That his conversion to Home Rule is entirely attributable to the endless murders and atrocities of the Land League, the Invincibles, and other Fenian organisations, is universally admitted in Ireland by Unionists and Nationalists alike. And once an Irish Parliament is granted, how will he resist the demand for Irish independence, for the Irish Republic affiliated with America? Query--if a given number of murders were required to bring about Home Rule, how many murders will be required to effect complete separation? A mere question in arithmetic.