But it may be asked, are we always to give way to sectional feeling? History has interwoven many races and they must surely learn to live together. What of French and British in Canada, or of British and Dutch in South Africa? What again of Ulster? If Ireland is a nation, does the nation include the Protestant half of Ulster or does it not? If yes, how can any of our tests of unity stand? If not, how can we recognize Ireland as one nation and not as two? Let us take these questions in turn, and let us consider first the measure and importance to be attached to national sentiment. We are dealing here, it has been admitted, with a force which it is impossible to measure _a príorí_ by any external tests. We seem able to judge it only by the event. If in fact Irish nationalism had yielded to the redress of definite grievances, if it had been practically possible to kill Home Rule by kindness, Unionist statesmanship would have been justified. I do not say justified by success, for success is not a judge giving decision by rules of equity. It would have been justified rather in the sense that it would have been experimentally proved to have been founded on a true interpretation of the case. The Unionist case—at its best—was that Irish nationalism was a passing and superficial sentiment. At its core were certain real grievances, but it was swollen into a mass of imposing appearances, but of loose and flabby texture. The plan was to remove the grievances with one hand, while with the other every ebullition of sentiment into unruly speech or action was steadily repressed. Had the plan succeeded it would have shown that Irish nationality was an illusion, or at best a thin and insubstantial product of a passing historical phase. In so far as it has failed it has shown that Irish nationality is a reality, deep rooted in the past, and to be reckoned with permanently in the future. In a word the test of nationality lies in history. If the life of one people can be absorbed into that of another so that free Government can proceed unimpeded, not violated by the habitual resort to “exceptional legislation,” the union is justified by the event. If on the other hand the demand for autonomy remains clear and persistent, through evil report and good report, through coercion and concession, through adversity and prosperity, in days of disorder when despair has reigned and in law abiding times rendered calm by hope, there is the proof that nationality is a vital principle, and a permanent force with which liberty must make its account.