We can observe over the same period a gradual disintegration of confidence in elected representatives both in England and Ireland, though the operative causes have not been the same, to the superficial glance. Intelligent Englishmen have been driven to doubt the efficacy of parliamentary government by the exposure of party corruption, and by the realization of the fact that political power is the shadow of which economic power is the substance. Irishmen, on the other hand, having being baulked of the opportunity of arriving at the same conclusion as a result of actual political experience in Ireland, found themselves, by force of national circumstances, confronted with evidence of the futility of Westminster politics. They have reached the stage of disillusion, but are unable to see clearly the intervening stages, owing to the thwarted and abnormal political evolution of the country. If it seems a paradox to claim that a country which has demanded a parliament of its own is dissatisfied with the parliamentary system, it should be recalled that there is no necessary obligation upon the Irish people to set up in Dublin a legislature upon the English model. The national political institutions of Ireland, as competent authorities have pointed out, are susceptible of meeting the needs of a community, whose social and intellectual conditions are quite unlike those of England. Moreover, as our national economists, Molyneux, Berkeley, Swift, Lalor, and Connolly have shown, the Irish case against government from Westminster has been based, from the beginning of modern history, upon this fundamental necessity for a combination of political and economic power, without which there can be no freedom. If one aspect of the question has been over-emphasized, the fault is common to more countries than Ireland, and is peculiarly comprehensible in a people whose political development has been interrupted and delayed.