Let justice
only triumph in this one regard, and our keel will grate on the shore of
the Fortunate Islands, the Earthly Paradise. All the harshness of life
will be dulcified; we shall lie dreaming on golden sands, dipping full
goblets out of a sea that has been transmuted into lemonade. This, the
Utopian mood of humanity, is inextinguishable, and it has embroidered
the Home Rule idea in common with all others. Before the complexity of
modern economic organisation was as well understood as is now the case,
there is no doubt that certain sections of opinion in Ireland did regard
self-government as a sort of Aladdin's Lamp, capable of any miracle. The
necessity of pressing all the energy of the nation into one channel had
the effect of imposing on political life a simplicity which does not
belong to it. But all that is over and past. The Ireland of to-day does
not pay herself with words. She is safe from that reaction and
disillusionment which some prophets have discerned as the first harvest
of Home Rule, because she is already disillusioned.
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