of which will depend the future, not of Ireland merely, but of the British empire. Amidst these constructive measures the statesman will not reckon any provisions for the maintenance or aggrandisement of the Catholic Church in Ireland. A church which withstood calamity and survived the loss of its possessions, and flourished under three hundred years of bitter persecution, may safely be left to itself. State patronage, in any extended form, might corrupt, but could not strengthen, Irish Catholicism. Catholics in many countries are beginning to feel that freedom of action and development is of far greater value than endowments to the church. In Ireland, Catholics have long since perceived and acknowledged that liberty--not the enervating influence of court favor--is the true bulwark of Catholic worship. Legislators have, in fact, no occasion to take into their consideration the Irish Catholic Church, except in so far as its power and interests intermingle with the educational and other social and political problems which demand deep and impartial inquiry. Whoever examines, without prejudice or passion, the actual position of Ireland as an integral part of the British empire must confess that Ireland forms at this time, more than at any other, the cardinal point of English policy. Gibraltar was once the key to the Mediterranean and to political supremacy in Europe. Ireland is to England another Gibraltar, on whose rock British power must be either consolidated or riven. The Ireland of 1870 is rapidly entering on a new phase of existence, which is none the less worthy of the statesman's study because it is the result of causes altogether beyond his control. Ireland is no longer an island lying within a few hours' sail of the English navy, inhabited by men whose interests may be disposed of without reference to the wishes of any save the inhabitants of Great Britain. The people of Ireland are by no means confined within the territorial limits of that country. The Irish nation has two homes. The one is in Ireland, the other is in America. Misgovernment sent half Ireland into exile, and those exiles have prospered and multiplied to an extent far exceeding any known examples of similar transmigrations. But although there are two homes, there is but one nation of Irishmen. Five millions of men occupy Irish soil, but far more than twice five millions of Irishmen dwelling in foreign lands not only claim but exercise an ever-increasing influence on Irish politics. Some few among the ultra-conservative statesmen of England--and among them one no less distinguished than the great chief of the late Tory administration--looked with eyes of cruel satisfaction on the exodus which wiser men regarded with awe as a hemorrhage draining away the life-blood of their kingdom. The famine was to these bigoted men a God-gift, which swept off what they flippantly termed a superabundant population. Emigration was, in their eyes, a more tedious and costly