In the meantime, for those who like or dislike it, Home Rule is imminent. We are face to face no longer with a highly speculative, but with a vividly practical problem, raising legislative and administrative questions of enormous practical importance, and next year we shall be dealing with this problem in an atmosphere of genuine reality totally unlike that of 1886, when Home Rule was a startling novelty to the British electorate, or of 1893, when the shadow of impending defeat clouded debate and weakened counsel. It would be pleasant to think that the time which has elapsed, besides greatly mitigating anti-Irish prejudice, had been used for scientific study and dispassionate discussion of the problem of Home Rule. Unfortunately, after eighteen years the problem remains almost exactly where it was. There are no detailed proposals of an authoritative character in existence. No concrete scheme was submitted to the country in the recent elections. None is before the country now. The reason, of course, is that the Irish question is still an acute party question, not merely in Ireland, but in Great Britain. Party passion invariably discourages patient constructive thought, and all legislation associated with it suffers in consequence. Tactical considerations, sometimes altogether irrelevant to the special issue, have to be considered. In the case of Home Rule, when the balance of parties is positively determined by the Irish vote, the difficulty reaches its climax. It is idle to blame individuals. We should blame the Union. So long as one island democracy claims to determine the destinies of another island democracy, of whose special needs and circumstances it is admittedly ignorant, so long will both islands suffer. This ignorance is not disputed. No Irish Unionist claims that Great Britain should govern Ireland on the ground that the British electorate, or even British statesmen, understand Irish questions. On the contrary, in Ireland, at any rate, their ignorance is a matter for satirical comment with all parties. What he complains of is, that the British electorate is beginning to carry its ignorance to the point of believing that the Irish electorate is competent to decide Irish questions, and in educating the British electorate he has hitherto devoted himself exclusively to the eradication of this error. The financial results of the Union are such that he is now being cajoled into adding, "It is your money, not your wisdom, that we want." Once more, an odd state of affairs, and some day we shall all marvel in retrospect that the Union was so long sustained by a separatist argument, reinforced in latter days by such an inconsistent and unconscionable claim.