to the Mediterranean, and including also the western half of Switzerland.

II. The Kingdom of Burgundy in the Merovingian period, somewhat smaller than I.

III. The Kingdom of Provence or Burgundy, founded A.D. 879, including Provence, Dauphiné, the southern part of Savoy, and the country between the Saône and the Jura.

IV. The Kingdom of Trans-Jurane Burgundy, founded A.D. 888, including the northern part of Savoy, and all Switzerland between the Reuss and the Jura.

V. The Kingdom of Burgundy or Arles, formed A.D. 937 by the union of III. and IV. From 1032 it formed part of the Empire. It has since, bit by bit, been absorbed by France, except the Swiss portion.

VI. The Lesser Duchy, corresponding very nearly with what is now Switzerland west of the Reuss, including the Valais. It disappeared from history in the thirteenth century.

VII. The Free County or Palatinate of Burgundy, lying between the Saône and the Jura. It was a fief of the Empire, and afterwards became French.

VIII. The Landgraviate of Burgundy, lying in what is now Western Switzerland, on both sides of the Aar, between Thun and Solothurn-hardly mentioned after the thirteenth century. IX. The Circle of Burgundy, established by the Emperor Charles V. in 1548, including VII. and the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands.

X. The Duchy of Burgundy, the most northerly part of the old kingdom of the Burgundians, always a fief of the Crown of France, and a province of France till the Revolution. Of this Charles the Bold was duke; he was also count of VII.

HENRY WORSLEY.

ART. VIII.-A SYMPOSIUM ON HOME RULE.

I. THE CLAIM FOR HOME RULE, UPON GENERAL PRINCIPLES.

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LTOGETHER apart from the world of politics, there are many minds for whom the Irish Question has a singular interest, on account of the social laws of which it reveals the working, and the problems which it presents for solution. In so far as it casts light upon the action and direction of social forces, it has a scientific value far above local or national

interests, and affects our knowledge of a far wider area than of Ireland or the British Empire. We cannot look upon the Irish Question merely as a troublesome incident of our own times. There was an Irish Question in 1573, in 1649, in 1688, in 1782, in 1798, quite as much as in 1829, in 1848, in 1867, in 1870, in 1882, or 1886. For three centuries, at least, it lies all along the line of our history. The very amount and persistence of the friction shows the depth and the force of the causes at work. The issues now involved are naturally of an advanced kind. We may take comfort in the thought that they are those which could occur only at an advanced stage of the political education of nations, and such as never could have arisen except in the midst of liberty-loving, liberty-giving peoples.

Let us state the problem. We have in the three kingdoms more than thirty millions of people united under the same Crown and Constitution. Of these, four millions are disaffected. They themselves would use a stronger word, but we may say that they dislike the legislative Union; they dislike their rulers; they dislike the system and method in which they are governed. It is no part of our plan to discuss whether this disaffection is reasonable or unreasonable. It is enough to point out the fact that it exists. When we remember that it has prevailed in three-fourths of the island for centuries, we are not likely to be soothed into the belief that it is merely the expression of a "minority" or the work of "agitators.' Both countries can afford to agree that disaffection is an evil. Whatever may be the present or future of Ireland, it never can be her real interest that her relations with any people, and least of all with England, should be other than those of co-operation and goodwill. On the other hand, if the might of England were greater than it is, it never could be her interest to have, so to speak, within her frontiers, four millions of secret or avowed enemies, ready to hail her "difficulty" as their "opportunity." opportunity." Such disaffection is rightly regarded as a weak point in the Empire, a drawback in peace, and, possibly, a danger in war. It is certain that disaffection, as an evil, ought to be removed. It is equally certain that it is not an evil which can be removed at the point of the sword. It is plain that the root of the evil lies in feeling. Force cannot suppress feeling. It strengthens it. Force can only silence the outward expression of feeling. If any lesson has been clearly conveyed by Anglo-Irish history, it is that force is a remedy for rebellion, but not for disaffection. If England's mission were nothing higher or better than the maintenance of mere outward public order, no one will doubt that her soldiers can always be relied upon to secure it. When we are reduced to look no higher than mere brute force, we have

Mr. Chamberlain's authority for believing that thirty-two millions of people will have really nothing to fear in dealing with four. But if the aim of England is something nobleras to all patriotic Englishmen we conceive it must be-if it is not only to provide for the peace, but to promote the happiness of all parts of the three kingdoms, then the problem is one of a higher kind. We conceive that to all Englishmen the first article of the national creed is, and ever must be, the unity of the Empire. By every title of duty and patriotism they are bound to seek and secure it as something sacred, to hold it as a doctrine, and to cultivate it as a virtue. But by the very force of the fact we are bound to believe that they will not rest satisfied with anything less than unity in its highest, strongest and most perfect attainable form. When we remember that, in the problem before them, the factors to be united are men and races, living and intelligent forces, progress postulates that the unity desiderated be something stronger and better than a dead physical bond, and that the object aimed at be to promote a living moral union between them. It is patriotism therefore, as well as progress, to desire to see all parts of the Empire, and especially its three nucleal parts, united, not in fetters of force and fear, but in the fellowship of friendship and freedom. The evolution of such a union is the task not of soldiers but of statesmen. But to succeed, it must reach the evil it seeks to remedy. It must aim at effecting a change, not merely in what Irishmen say and do, but in what they think and feel towards this country. It is easy to mistake how much that means. Men are wearied of hearing that it is only a question of dealing firmly and fairly with the Irish people. Conservatives emphasize the "firmly and Liberals dwell upon the "fairly." Neither seem to have any well-defined conception as to how much is implied by firmness, or how much is included in fairness. Both are clearly separated by more than the breadth of a silver streak from the mind of Irishmen, whose main grievance is not the kind but the extent of the dealing, and who desire to be spared any dealing whatever, firm or fair, in those things which they conceive to be purely their own concern. Nothing is more endless or hopeless than any attempt to settle the question by mere polemic or controversy. As in all great questions, the facts are of too vast and varied a kind to be completely grasped by any individual mind, and each one will have his judgment swayed, and his sympathies awakened, by the particular section of facts presented to him. The worst enemies of truth are not those who distort or deny facts, but those who select them. It requires but little acquaintance with such questions to find that facts are much like so many keys, from which, by skill of

touch and selection, almost any kind of music can be made, and upon which the "Rights of England" or the "Wrongs of Ireland" can be played with equal pathos and facility. The public mind of the age may, perhaps, alone be trusted to gradually grasp the facts as a whole, and on them to found, slowly and surely, its irresistible verdict. For such reasons, we take it that the question may be approached with better chance of success-at all events, with less danger of coloured views-if we consider it from a higher and wider ground than that of the mere local issues. We venture to indicate certain ideas, which we conceive to be at work, in one form or another, in the minds of those who are actors and supporters of the movement. We do not judge of their soundness or unsoundness, but merely point them out as affecting, at least to some extent, the direction of thought and action in the Home Rule Question. We briefly review these ideas in succession.

1. THE IDEA OF A "PEOPLE."-The idea of a people has a peculiar interest and importance, because to many it seems to contain the root of the Irish Question, and to some extent the key to its solution. It is often the preconceived notion which we form to ourselves of what is meant by a people" that makes us, almost unconsciously, Unionists or Home Rulers. We may loosely define a people as a mass of men living together on the same territory. By living together, we mean that they interdwell and intermarry, and are thereby bound together in a community of blood, life, and interest. Races of widely different type and origin may undoubtedly be welded into one people, as were the Norman and Saxon in former times, and as are the various nationalities of the United States population in our own. But in all cases, two conditions are plainly required. First, that the element races should be poured into the same territory; and secondly, that they should unite by intermarriage and be fused by intercourse and concourse in all the purposes of life. Apart from these conditions, and where peoples are locally separate, they remain distinct, even though they may be closely combined under the same political sovereignty. History presents such examples as Spain and the Netherlands, Turkey and Greece, Austria and Lombardy. We have in our own days such instances as England and Ireland, Russia and Poland, Austria and Hungary. On the other hand, in the formation of a people, descent from a single stock is clearly immaterial. A people is moulded and made, not so much by its past origin as by its actual circumstances. It is not by being born from a given race, but by being born into it, that we have the people, or "natio" as we should have preferred to call it. In conceiving the notion of a people, we have, therefore, to avoid the two extremes of needlessly.

narrowing it into the idea of race, or of thoughtlessly broadening it into the idea of State, an error which is peculiarly mischievous and misleading, because it involves an utter confusion of the natural with the political order. The State is the work of man. The people is the work of nature. Purely artificial conditions, such as arise from accidents of power, conquest, combination, may easily unite men into one State. Nothing but the natural conditions of blood, life, and place can unite them into one people. Union into one State is man-made, and can be brought about by human conventions. Union into one people is naturemade, and can no more be effected apart from the natural processes, than trees or animals could be made by an Article of a treaty or an Act of Parliament. The State is a combination of citizens under one supreme government. The people is a mass of individuals who intermarry and dwell together on the same territory. The two ideas are as distinct as the ideas of life and government-nature and politics. England and Ireland form one State. Just as certainly, they form two distinct Peoples. If it be thought desirable that in the two countries there should be but one people, there is but one way of effecting it. A given proportion of Englishmen should be distributed into all parts of Ireland (not planted in separate districts), and a corresponding proportion of Irishmen should be settled in like manner in England, and in such a way that both elements in both countries may be, as completely as possible, fused and intermingled.* Such an experiment in the wielding and welding of peoples would be rightly regarded as gigantic and abnormal. But until it is made, the two peoples, as peoples, are as plainly and palpably distinct as the two islands. A union on paper is not a union in nature. Two peoples, naturally distinct, cannot be bewitched. into one because we have passed an Act of Parliament or made their representatives sit in the same Chamber. It would be mere political superstition to believe so.

We take it, therefore, that the truest idea of a people is that which is expressed by saying that it is a natural product of the highest order, and one which is formed, fixed, and individualized by conditions of natural force and endurance.

It may be worth while to observe, that even then it may be fairly doubted if the solution would be a final one. The Irish Sea would still be broad enough to make the two countries two distinct centres of association and intermarriage, and in the lapse of time, the natural forces at work would irresistibly revive the distinction of peoples. Give nature a separate place, and in the long run she will make a separate people. Such an evolution might be the work of centuries, but it sufficiently indicates that solutions like to the above are not upon the lines of nature, but rather opposed to them.