To come to somewhat later times, under the clan system, says Mr. Balfour, it was impossible to rise to civilization. “And when England dealt with Ireland, Ireland was completely under the tribal system” (a theory false to history). The superior English polity in due time, however, spread its hand over Iberian chaos. “An Irish Parliament is a British invention”—the word, with Mr. Balfour’s easy adjustment of history to politics, is probably chosen to give the Scotch a gratuitous share in the credit, with a compliment to their spirit; for, as he says, “my Lowland ancestors in Scotland had precisely the same contempt for my Highland fellow-countrymen as the English had for the Irish in Ireland”—(the word Lowland being here misused in a non-historic sense). “Every political idea in Ireland is of English growth—the Irish dependent Parliament, the Irish independent Parliament—it is all of British extraction.” Mr. Balfour seems to imagine in his indifferent way that the “dependent form” was the first; he seems to guess that it was a single form, “_the_ dependent Parliament”; and he calls his “independent Parliament” “a practically sovereign legislature.” It would be hard to gather more fundamental errors into one sentence. At any rate in his simplified scheme both forms of “the British invention” failed in Ireland. But in the success of the Union and the assembly at Westminster, England has established successfully what Mr. Balfour calls “the unity which we have inherited from our forefathers.” Such are the “General Principles” which Mr. Balfour—speaking with all the authority of an “Unionist” statesman, head of a great English party, leader for a generation of those who refuse to Ireland any claim to national memory or national hope, absolute ruler for four years of that island—has issued in his book “Aspects of Home Rule” to rally his followers. This confusion of fictions, in all their brave untruth, furnishes the historic background and justification of the Unionist creed. We might not easily expect an “Imperial” leader so far to forego respect for himself or for his public. There is an Old Irish proverb: “Three candles that illumine every darkness: truth, nature, knowledge.” But Mr. Balfour is as a man for his pleasure wandering in the dark among the tombs of vain things. And from places of death comes as of old “sinister information” to minister to ignorance and prejudice, and to be still the hindrance to the reformation of Ireland.