(_b_) Home Rule would undo to a large extent the evils of the paper Union of 1800, modifying racial animosities, introducing a new spirit of patriotism and healing the sores of long standing. The means by which the Union of Ireland with England was effected were so destructive of everything moral in political life that every thinking man denounces them as infamous, and they are without a defender past or present. It is tolerably certain that 90 per cent. of the Protestants of Ireland, including a large number of the landlords who refused to be bribed, were as bitter against the destruction of the Irish Parliament as their descendants are against its restoration. Listening to the harangues against an Irish Parliament, one can only conclude that the applauding auditors regard their ancestors as fools. To have a dance on the graves of one’s ancestors may be a new amusement, but it is hardly respectful to the memory of brave men whose opinions of the hurtful effects to Ireland from the Union and the loss of a legislature have been fully justified by events. Nobody can say that the Union has been a success. For fully seventy years of the nineteenth century the government of Ireland was a legalised tyranny, the whole political power of making and administering laws for Ireland was in the hands of the landlords, who were allowed to rob and spoil at their will the Irish tenants, Protestant and Catholic. A tenant’s Protestantism did not save him from a rack rent; it often increased the rack rents. For generations the tenants of Ireland had to pay between five and ten millions beyond what was just and fair, and those millions might as well have been cast into the Irish Channel as far as bringing any benefit to Ireland was concerned. The Imperial Parliament is heavily in debt to Ireland for the spoliation of the Irish farmers and labourers which it permitted. Irishmen of all creeds, as they look back on a long spell of slavery, have no right to join in singing pæans to the Union. If changes were made in the laws bringing a modicum of justice to Irishmen, giving them a right to call their votes their own, and a right to part of the property they created, the predecessors of the Unionists of to-day have no claim to credit for the changes, as they fought with the same savageness they are showing towards Home Rule against the introduction of the ballot, and took as their motto “tenants’ rights are landlords’ wrongs.” The thanks of Irishmen are due to the Liberal Party, led by Mr. Gladstone, and backed powerfully by the Nationalist Members. Unionists of every colour are dwelling on the prosperity of Ireland, quoting statistics about the tremendous increase of sheep and swine. They forget two things, one of which is that Ireland since the Union has lost 50 per cent. of its inhabitants, but they say “What of that? We have a large increase of sheep and swine, the true index of a nation’s prosperity.” The Founder of our faith did not agree with the Unionist