strongest. Of its strength a hundred examples might be given, but none more conclusive than the recent action of the Church in the matter of conscription,' which involves the whole principle at issue, not only between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland, but between Liberalism and Catholicism everywhere. The Catholic position was clearly stated by Father Peter Finlay, S.J., Professor of Theology in the National University, in letters to the Irish Times of the 14th and 18th of last May. He writes:

No doubt political consequences of the first magnitude have followed on the action of the bishops; but the issue laid before them was religious and moral, not political, and they were entitled, in duty bound, to decide it. Laws of Parliament may be just or unjust, binding or not binding upon conscience; and when we Catholics doubt their justice and binding force, we appeal, not to politicians or to civil courts for guidance, but to the Catholic bishops. In this sense we set our bishops above Parliament, as every true Christian sets his individual conscience.'

The bishops are not, indeed, Father Finlay says, infallible. Bishops are entitled to decide what issues are moral and what political-this is the doctrine held by all educated Catholicsbut their decision must not be arbitrary; they must be guided, in deciding, by the law which they administer (i.e. the law of the Church), and 'an appeal may always be made against 'their decision to the supreme teaching authority in Rome.'

In view of the fact that, at one time or another, the Church has claimed jurisdiction over nearly every field of activity of the modern State, as falling within the sphere of faith and morals, and that none of these claims have ever been abandoned, Father Finlay's contention means in effect that whatever constitutional system may be set up in a truly Catholic country, all the acts of the legislature must run the gauntlet of a House of Lords Spiritual and, in case of dispute, be referred to the supreme authority in Rome. In this case, what is the value of the 'guarantees' given to the Protestant minority in Ireland? If Father Finlay be right, no guarantees of freedom of opinion in Ireland will, under a permanent Catholic majority,

*He has since developed the theme in an article on 'The Doctrinal Authority of Bishops,' in 'Studies,' Vol. vii., No. 26, June, 1918.

be worth the paper on which they are written. There would, of course, be no 'persecution'; there would be no blazing Acts of Faith in College Green; but there would be an indefinite accentuation of the persistent pressure with which Irish Protestants are already familiar, a constant tendency of the legislature, and more especially of the administration, to put non-Catholics at a disadvantage in every walk of life.*

Religion, then, marks a fundamental line of cleavage between different sections of the Irish people. But it is not the only one. There are other dividing forces which owe their origin partly to the racial and political struggles of the past, partly to the economic conditions of the present. If we are to unite 'Ireland,' wrote Mr. George Russell in his 'Thoughts for 'the Convention,' 'we can only do so by recognizing what truly are the principles each party stands for, and will not forsake, ' and for which if necessary they will risk life.' To recognize these principles, even as Mr. Russell expounds them, is to recognize the impossibility of uniting Ireland-as Mr. Russell himself confessed when he left the Convention in a huff. most certainly, unless they be recognized, it is impossible to understand the Irish question; and it is therefore proposed to indicate as briefly as possible the principles of the three great groups of Irish opinion, and the causes which have led during the last two years to the shifting of the balance between them. These three groups are the Unionists, Nationalists, and Sinn Feiners.

But

Mr. Russell, in the pamphlet above quoted, makes a sincere effort to state the position of the Unionists impartially, though his own bias is throughout obvious. He writes:

'The Unionists are, many of them, descendants of settlers who, by their entrance into Ireland, broke up the Gaelic uniformity and introduced the speech, the thoughts, characteristic of another race.'

As an instance may be cited the Scheme for University Scholarships and Bursaries under the Irish Universities Act, 1918, issued by the Dublin Corporation. The scheme lays down that 'Holders of the City Scholarships awarded in the year 1918 must be matriculated students of the National University,' the whole raison d'être of which is its' Catholic atmosphere.' Trinity College, though it has many Catholic students, and though for the year 1917-1918 it contributed £1,916 2s. 8d. to the City rates, is excluded.

He is right when he says that these settlers have grown to love their country of adoption as much as any inhabitants of Gaelic origin; but when he adds that, owing to centuries of life in Ireland and by intermarriage, they are now much more akin to their fellow-countrymen in mind and manner than they are to any other people, he is certainly not right as regards the Protestants of the north, who are and feel themselves to be far more akin to the Scots than to the southern Irish. After paying a generous tribute to the sterling qualities which have made the industries Ulster famous, he sums up quite accurately the objections of Uster business men to the creation of an Irish national State :

'They believe that an Irish legislature would be controlled by a majority of small farmers, men who have no knowledge of affairs, or of the peculiar needs of Ulster industry, or the intricacy of the problem involved in carrying on an international trade.'

Ulstermen point out that the principle of ' Ireland a nation' involves the complete right of self-taxation, and that the Nationalists and more particularly the Sinn Feiners proclaim their intention of protecting Irish industries. This would involve a tariff war with Great Britain fatal to Ulster industries, which are dependent upon the maintenance of the closest relations with Great Britain and complete association with her world-wide prestige in the benefits of which they participate. Ulstermen, moreover, fear that the expense of the social and economic experiments in which the Irish would indulge would not be shared by the farmers, who are not accustomed to direct taxation, and that they would use their majority to shift the burden on to the industrial north, which would be crushed under the weight of the excess profits and income taxes. In short, to the religious antagonism, and to the race antagonism which difference of creed has accentuated, is added a conflict of economic interests between the industrial north and the agricultural south.

The second political group consists of the Sinn Fein party. 'These,' says Mr. Russell, may be described as the spiritual 'inheritors of the more ancient race in Ireland,' and their general standpoint cannot be more authoritatively described than in his own words :

'They regard the preservation of their nationality as a sacred

charge, themselves as a conquered people owing no allegiance to the dominant race. . . . They are inspired by an ancient history, a literature stretching beyond the Christian era, a national culture and distinct national ideals, which they desire to manifest in a civilization which shall not be an echo or an imitation of any other. . . . They assert that the Union kills the soul of the people,' etc. etc.

The third group-that of the Nationalists-occupies a middle position between those who desire the perfecting of the Union and those who aim at complete independence, their policy being to maintain the connection with the Empire, and at the same time to acquire an Irish control over administration and legislation in Ireland.

They are a practical party taking what they can get, and because they could show ostensible results they have had a greater following in Ireland than any other party. This is natural because the average man in every country is a realist. But this reliance on material results to secure support meant that they must always show results, or the minds of their countrymen veered to those ultimates and fundamentals which await settlement here as they do in all civilizations.

'The intellect of Ireland,' says Mr. Russell, 'is fixed on ' fundamentals.' He makes it clear-and it is far clearer to-day than it was a year ago—that the Home Rule Act, if put into operation at once, and even if Ulster were cajoled or forced into accepting it, would not be regarded as a final settlement by Irish Nationalists, that it had nowhere in Ireland been accepted as final, and that unless it were altered so as to give Ireland unfettered control over taxation, customs, excise, and trade policy, the Irish people, instead of trying to make the best of it, would begin at once to use whatever powers they possessed under it as a lever to gain the desired control. The practically unanimous claim of the Nationalists,' he says, 'is for the 'status and economic control possessed by the self-governing 'dominions,' and he adds that by this alone will the causes of friction between the two nations (i.e. Great Britain and Ireland) be removed. Causes of friction are to be removed, by the erection of tariff barriers and preparation for a tariff war! They are to be removed by subjecting the large Protestant minority of English and Scottish descent to the domination of a purely Irish majority, fervently Catholic,

and led by fanatics eagerly intent on eliminating everything English or Scottish from the life of Ireland!

Thus we are brought down to the fundamentals of Irish Nationalism. As recent events have shown, the distinction between the Nationalist and Sinn Fein parties is not one of principle: it is only a difference of opinion as to the application of a principle on which both are agreed-the principle that Ireland is a separate nation.

English politicians, by their habitual loose use of language, have played into the hands of the separatists. By asserting that Great Britain is championing the rights of small 'nationalities,' without defining what they mean by nationalities, or what rights they have in mind, these phrasemakers have laid themselves open to a charge of hypocrisy ; for the superficial resemblances between the Irish and other national movements are conspicuous. In a pamphlet, 'The 'Resurrection of Hungary,' published in 1904, and said to have been inspired by Kuno Meyer, Mr. Arthur Griffith, the Sinn Fein leader, drew a parallel between Ireland and Hungary. The pamphlet has had an immense circulation, and his analysis of the methods by which the Magyars obtained from Austria the virtual independence of their national State has been the foundation of Sinn Fein policy since.* It may be concisely stated that the Irish claim to a separate national polity has, indeed, no such historical and juridical foundation as underlies the claims of the Poles or the Czechs, or such as underlay that of the Magyars; nor is there, as in the case of the Yugo-Slavs, the grievance of men of the same race and sympathies being artificially divided under separate allegiances and compelled on occasion to fight each other. But language and methods are the same. The Irish movement began, as similar national movements had begun elsewhere, by the attempt on the part of a small group of enthusiasts to revive an all but extinct literary tradition and to recreate a language which survived only in local dialects mutually more or less unintelligible. The Gaelic League, founded in 1893, for more than two decades made little headway; up to the time of the rebellion it had not assumed a definitely extremist complexion; and the Sinn Fein group had no considerable following in the country.

* See the remarkable article, 'Sinn Fein and Germany,' by 'Vigilant,' in the 'Quarterly Review' for January last.