fall flat. They have based this view, not on the assumption that
Englishmen love Rome more, but rather upon the opinion that they care
for all religions less, and that hence the appeal to bigotry would make
less play.

The fact, however, remains that one meets men in England with every
sympathy for Irish claims who shrink nevertheless from the advocacy of
the principle of self-government through fear lest the Protestant
minority should suffer. This fear for the rights of minorities serves
always as the last ditch in which a losing cause entrenches itself, and
timid souls have always been found who hesitate at the approach of every
reform on the ground that the devil you know may turn out to be not so
bad as the devil you do not know. The legislative history of the House
of Lords during the last century, if examples of this were needed, would
provide them in large numbers; and as to the question of whether it is
better that the majority or the minority of a nation should be governed
against its will, one need scarcely say which is the principle adopted
in a normal system of Parliamentary government. The rapidity with which
under Grattan's Parliament an emancipated Ireland ceased to be
intolerant leads one to suspect that the bigotry of creeds which is
attributed to us as a race is not a natural characteristic, but rather
the outcome of external causes. This view is borne out by the opinion
of Lecky, who declared that the deliberate policy of English statesmen
was "to dig a deep chasm between Catholics and Protestants," and if
proof of the allegation is needed it is to be found in the fact that in
the middle of the eighteenth century the Protestant Primate, Archbishop
Boulter, wrote to Government concerning a certain proposal that "it
united Protestants and Papists, and if that conciliation takes place,
farewell to English influence in Ireland."