The result was inevitable. Housed, on their own historic land, in a State which was no State at all because it was not of their own devising, the Irish people have repudiated all responsibility for it, have misused and abused it, and have arisen in a continual series of revolts against it. They were morally bound to do so, or become no more a nation but a slave race. Continuing a Nation they were bound to assert their protest; and they have habitually done so very remarkably by the assertion of the laws, meanings and implications of their old State, destroyed centuries ago, as against the forms, meanings and implications of a system of government utterly alien to them. There are few things in history more remarkable or arresting than this challenge of an alien government with the laws and procedures of a State that centuries before had been hewn asunder, had been trampled under foot, but had continued in the instincts and intuitions of the Nation--the instincts and intuitions that in the first instance, at the dawn of history, had built that State. Such a state of affairs, continued long enough, was bound to claim the attention of the world. It has succeeded in doing so; and the immediate result has been that all has become bustle and hurry to mend the calamitous condition of Ireland. Men with anxious brows and careworn faces have begun to emit constitutions for Ireland at the pace of about one a week--with a facility hardly to be rivalled by the Abbé Siéyès of old in his most fecund hour. Dusty tomes are turned down from the top shelf, and every form of constitution and government is studied in order that it may contribute some new beauty to the destined scheme. Canada, Australia and South Africa have been laid under special contribution, because these are held to be adornments of the English Empire. The words Home Rule, Colonial Home Rule and Dominion Rule buzz about the air like flies of a summer’s day, and nobody seems to be very clear as to what they exactly mean, except that there is a deep-seated suspicion that they are not being used very honestly. The air is racked with precedents from China to Peru; and amid it all, with a patience born of centuries, stands the Nation for whom all this pother is supposed to be raised.