independent nations under the same crown, exists between Hungary and Austria, the least favourable between England and Ireland. Nor let it be said that these reasons against an equal alliance are reasons à fortiori against union. The only one of them of which this could be said is the alienation of feeling, and this, if the real grounds of bitterness were removed, the close intercourse and community of interest engendered by union would more and more tend to heal: while the natural tendency of separation, either complete or only partial, would be to estrange the countries from each other more and more. It may be added, that the Hungarian population, which has so nobly achieved its independence, has been trained from of old in the management of the details of its affairs, and has shown, in very trying circumstances, a measure of the qualities which fit a people for self-government, greater than has yet been evinced by Continental nations in many other respects far more advanced. The democracy of Ireland, and those who are likely to be its first leaders, have, at all events, yet to prove their possession of qualities at all similar.
For these reasons it is my conviction that the separation of Ireland from Great Britain would be most undesirable for both, and that the attempt to hold them together by any form of federal union would be unsatisfactory while it lasted, and would end either in reconquest or in complete separation. But in however many respects Ireland might be a loser, she would be a gainer in one. Let separation be ever so complete a failure, one thing it would do: it would convert the peasant farmers into peasant proprietors: and this one thing would be more than an equivalent
