We now know that changes in political machinery, however important, do not of themselves produce content.

A poverty-stricken peasant in Connaught will not be made happy because a Parliament meets at Dublin.

We now further know that the difficulty of satisfying popular aspirations often arises from the fundamental faults of human nature.

Trust in the people may often be wiser than distrust, but to suppose that masses of men are wiser, more reasonable, or more virtuous than the individuals of which they consist, is as idle a political delusion as the corresponding ecclesiastical delusion that a church has virtues denied to the believers who make up the church.

On this point an anecdote makes my meaning clearer than an argument.