The political habits formed in dealing with Ireland have disastrously influenced Imperial policy in the past. Cannot we, by a supreme national effort, reverse the mental process, and, if we have always failed in the past to learn from Irish lessons how not to treat the Colonies, at any rate learn, even at the eleventh hour, from our colonial lessons how to treat Ireland? Must we for ever sound the old alarms about "disloyalty" and "dismemberment" and "abandonment of the loyal minority to the tender mercies of their foes"; phrases as old as the Stamp Act of 1765? Must we carry the "gentle art of making enemies," practised to the last point of danger in the Colonies, to the preposterous pitch of estranging men at our very doors, while pluming ourselves on the friendship of peoples 12,000 miles away? These are anxious times. We have a mighty rival in Europe, and we need the co-operation of all our hands and brains. On a basis of mere profit and loss, is it sensible to maintain a system in Ireland which weakens both Ireland and the whole United Kingdom, clogs the delicate machinery of Parliamentary government, and, worked out in hard figures of pounds, shillings, and pence, has ceased even to show a pecuniary advantage? Have Unionists really no better prescription for the constitutional difficulties caused by the Union than to reduce the representation of Ireland in Parliament so as to give Ireland still less control than at present over her own affairs? Is that seriously their last word in statesmanship, to exasperate Nationalist Ireland without even providing in any appreciable degree a mechanical remedy for disordered political functions? The idea has only to be stated to be dismissed. It is not even practical politics. Some things are sheer impossibilities; and to leave the Union system as it is, while reducing representation, is one of them.