Millions have been lent to Ireland, and these millions must be repaid.

But if the need for some such arrangement be certain, its desperate impolicy is no less certain.

England and Ireland, the English Government and the Irish Government, are brought into direct hostile collision.

The rich English Government appears in the light of an imperious creditor the Irish Government stands in the position of a poverty-stricken debtor.

Note, and this is the point which should be pressed home, that in all confederations the difficulty of exacting the money needed by the federal government from any state of the confederacy has been found all but insuperable.