But these men take only a dilettante part in politics, and no value is set on industrial, commercial or professional success in the choice of public men.

Can it be that to the Irish mind politics are, what Bulwer Lytton declared love to be, "the business of the idle, and the idleness of the busy"?
These, though only a few of the strange ironies of Irish life, are so paradoxical and so anomalous that they are not unnaturally attributed to the intrusion of an alien and unfriendly power; and this furnishes the reason why everything which goes wrong is used to nourish the anti-English sentiment.

At the same time they give emphasis to the growing doubt as to the wisdom of those to whom the Irish Question presents itself only as a single and simple issue--namely, whether the laws which are to put all these things right shall be made at St.
Stephen's by the collective wisdom of the United Kingdom, aided by the voice of Ireland--which is adequately represented--or whether these laws shall be made by Irishmen alone in a Parliament in College Green.
It is obviously necessary that, in presenting a comprehensive scheme for dealing with the conditions I have roughly indicated.

I should make some reference to the attitude towards Home Rule of both the Nationalists and the Unionists who have joined in work which, whatever be its irregularity from the standpoint of party discipline as enforced in Ireland, has succeeded in some degree in directing the energies of our countrymen to the development of the resources of our country.

Many of my fellow-workers were Nationalists who, while stoutly adhering to the prime necessity for constitutional changes, took the broad view, which was unpopular among the Irish Party, that much could be done, even under present conditions, to build up our national life on its social, intellectual, and economic sides.