"During the years which preceded the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 there was in this country [British Isles] a general indifference to the colonial question which did not cease till long afterwards. . . . After the Cobden era came that of Mr. Gladstone, who was in his zenith in the sixties and as purely insular and deficient in the power of Imperial thought as Cobden had been in the forties."[163-1] "A governor, leaving to take charge of an Australian colony, was told even from the Colonial Office that he would probably be the last representative of the Crown sent out from Britain. This tendency of official thought found its culmination when, in 1866, a great journal frankly warned Canada, the {164} greatest of all the colonies, that it was time to prepare for the separation from the mother-land that must needs come."[164-1] "Mr. Goldwin Smith . . . in his . . . _Canada and the Canadian Question_, which may fairly be supposed to condense all that can be said in favor of the separation of Canada from the Empire, and generally in support of that form of national disintegration which is involved in the great colonies becoming separate states or annexing themselves to other nations . . . is almost the last conspicuous representative of a school of thinkers which twenty-five or thirty years ago appeared likely to dominate English opinion on colonial affairs."[164-2] Only slowly were learned the lessons of the American Revolution, which a British historian in 1883 could truthfully say, "We have tacitly agreed to mention as seldom as we can."[164-3] The tendency to separation is latent in every Pan-Angle community. It is only when local and central authority are properly balanced that it is quieted. In one it has never been quieted. The story of Ireland it is unnecessary and inexpedient here to narrate.[164-4] An Englander calls it "the greatest and most lamentable failure of the Pax Britannica."[164-5] It is merely the proof, again and again repeated, of the inability of Pan-Angles {165} successfully to control the local affairs of other Pan-Angles. There is something in us, in our individualism, that forbids such success, and calls for separation, which leads to rebellion if opposed, or revolution if permitted. The Irish for generations have been leaving Ireland. They leave embittered against England. That bitterness they spread broadcast in the six younger Pan-Angle nations. Everywhere in these six nations the Irish find home rule.[165-1] The bitterness against government, as government, wears off. The Irishman becomes a citizen of a new and proud nation--he becomes a self-conscious Pan-Angle. But the Irish Question is no nearer solution than before.