Do we really think that a handful of Irishmen by merely talking can persuade eight times their number of Englishmen to take their grip off this country, to cease exploiting us, to give up their fat profits? Is it not, to say the least, more likely that the English majority, far cleverer and more powerful, will succeed in cajoling, bribing and fooling the few Irish flies who walk into the spiders' parlour? =In fact, was not the Act of Union specially designed for this very purpose?= To swallow a powerless Irish minority in an English Parliament, to give them facilities for talking and letting off steam that thereby the Irish people might be beguiled into doing nothing else. By providing a sham outlet for our energies, by diverting our attention into wordy warfare, the English Parliament has succeeded for 118 years in preventing us from seeing the obvious truth that the English Government can only be made unworkable =in Ireland=. The very genius of Parnell has done us harm by intensifying the illusion. He succeeded for a while, where Butt failed, because he adopted unparliamentary methods in Parliament. For a time, by persistent obstruction, Parnell made Government unworkable, even in England. He was beaten in the end; obstruction is no longer possible; we have reverted to the mock debates of Isaac Butt. Things are even much worse; for the whole Party system has made Parliament a fraud and a farce. The House of Commons has lost its independence to a caucus which controls the jobs and the party funds. The latest development, whereby Messrs. Lloyd George and Bonar Law have arranged to wipe out the Opposition, makes the further presence of a few Irish Nationalists a jocose anachronism. The English Coalition would, however, still like the eighty Irishmen to come and hobnob with them. England is far keener on their attendance than Ireland ever was. Those who oppose the Westminster policy are mostly in English prisons; absenteeism is treason felony. English aeroplanes drop leaflets printed (at our expense) by the English Government to denounce the policy of abstention, to show that it is folly. The English foreign propaganda tirelessly advertises the presence of Mr. Dillon and Co. in Westminster as the surest proof of England's kindness to us, and of Irish loyalty to the Empire. The Irish Party think that their attendance is good for Ireland, the English Government is quite certain that it is good for England, everyone agrees that it cannot be good for both. Which, do you think, knows the situation best: the English Government, whose policy of exploiting us has been hitherto so eminently successful, or the Irish Party which has been so often taken in, outwitted, bribed and duped? It is worth pondering over. =THE ALTERNATIVE.=