The person who invented the Irish question may or may not deserve well of his species. In a sense, of course, there has been an Irish question since the beginning of history. But it is only within the last century or so that we have begun to spell it with a big Q. That big Q perhaps attained its largest proportions during the eighties of the last century, and associated, as it usually was, with a capital G, which stood for Gladstone, and a capital P, which stood for somebody else, it certainly did yeoman service wherever a use for letters could be found. At the time of Mr. Gladstone’s Home Rule campaign[2] the existence of a highly insistent Irish question could not be doubted. A good deal of water has flowed under the bridges since then, however, and at the present moment, and in view of the present situation of Irish affairs, one is tempted to wonder whether there now exists, or whether there really has ever existed, an Irish question with a big Q at all. It is true that at the time of writing there is an actual and undesirable famine raging in Connemara. It is true that the population of the country is on the decline, and that the standard of comfort among the people will not bear comparison with the standard of comfort in any other country in the world, unless it be in the poorer and bleaker regions of Kamchatka; and it is true also that Irishmen as a body continue to exercise themselves both at street corners, and on all sorts of platforms, in a habit of rhetoric, which many years of shouting have made second nature with them. For all that, the Irish question as a portentous and vital matter appears to[3] be somewhat played out. One may safely say that in Ireland, at any rate, it has been reduced to an obscurity which allows of its being now spelled with about the smallest “q” in ordinary use among printers. In England it has been allowed to disappear, in favor of the Russo-Japanese War, Protection, and Do We Believe? On the whole, though it no doubt harrows the souls of the horde of carpet-baggers which have come to us out of Ireland, this condition of affairs is exceedingly salutary for Ireland itself. Now that the factions, and the tumult, and the turbulence, and the wrangling have died down, or at least been in large measure abated, the facts about Ireland are for the first time in history beginning, as it were, to swim into our ken. We are beginning to perceive, for example, that out of the quarrels and bloodshed of the past hundred years Ireland has emerged triumphant. It has been a case of a bankrupt, downtrodden and dwindling people’s fight against a rich and powerful dominant[4] people, and the weaker side has proved clearly that in the long run God is on the side of “justice.” To all intents and purposes Ireland is at the present moment in full possession of all that she herself has felt it reasonable to demand. She has the franchise, she has land laws which are almost socialistic in the benefits they offer to the cultivators of the soil, and she has local self-government. More than all, she has herself begun to recognize that the disposition of England toward her is becoming year by year less arrogant, less implacable, less contemptuous, and less severe. It has been said that Erin’s appeals for reasonable treatment at the hands of England have had to be made by violence of the most brutal and terrorizing kind. She has stood before us with the head of a landlord in one hand and the tail of a cow in the other, and screamed till we gave her what she wanted. And always in a large measure we have succumbed. And the singular part of it is that in no instance[5] have we had cause, nor do we appear likely to have cause, to regret it. Of course, that crown and summit of Irish blisses, Home Rule, has not yet been vouchsafed to her. But this, I believe, is due to the fact that Ireland herself is still making up her mind whether she really wants it. Half Ireland says, “Give us Home Rule,” the other half says, “Please don’t;” and the two parties seem to be getting on very well together by agreeing to differ. This is a true and natural settlement of a problem which, as I believe, is purely artificial, arising out of the exigencies of party and the jealousies of rival demagogues, rather than out of the desires of the people. If Ireland in her heart of hearts desired Home Rule, she would have it within the next couple of years. She has the good sense to know that, however fascinating the theory of Home Rule may appear, the practise of it for her would be difficult and irksome, if not altogether disastrous. Both sides are agreed that Home Rule for Ireland[6] means an immediate spell of civil war for Ireland. The Irish Catholic will tell you this, and the Irish Protestant is equally clear about it. In view of the condition and nature of the country, such a war were a calamity to be staved off at pretty well any cost, even if it were certain—and it is by no means certain—that the subsequent benefits would be appreciable and lasting. The politicians will tell you that it is possible to have in Ireland what is somewhat prettily called a “union of hearts.” “The union of hearts which I desire,” says one of them, “is a union of Irishmen of all classes and of all creeds, from the north to the south, from the east to the west; landlords and tenants, Catholics and Protestants, Orange and Green; and I look to this union as the surest way of bringing about the national regeneration of our country.” Which is exceedingly beautiful, but amounts to asking for the moon. Oil and water cannot be made to mix, and in a country where a couple of cardinals and a number[7] of bishops were lately stoned by a rabblement of Protestants, the union of hearts may be reckoned still a great way off. Holy Ireland—and I think it is rather to her credit—will never be brought to do what England and Scotland have managed to do, namely to set the political or material interest in front of the religious or spiritual interest. Catholics and Protestants in Ireland are Catholic and Protestant from head to foot and right through, and you will never induce them to forget it. All the same it is not impossible, with the exercise of a little charity and self-restraint, for the lion to lie down with the lamb politically, if not religiously, and this is what is happening in Ireland. In other words the Irish Catholics and Protestants have tacitly agreed that they can live in more or less amity under one government, providing that government is neither an Irish Catholic government nor an Irish Protestant government, but an alien, impartial and practically secular government.
 
As we have said, the Irish question as a portent and terror to England is disappearing, if indeed it has not already disappeared. For all that, the fact remains that Ireland in the main is a distressful country. Thackeray’s Snooks gives it as his opinion that “of all the wum countwith that I ever wead of, hang me if Ireland ithn’t the wummetht.” “Wum,” gay and irrepressible epithet though it may be, is really and deep down not the epithet; whereas “distressful” is. There are people in the world who are born to misfortune, whose lives are touched with melancholy from beginning to end, and who cannot be brought to rejoice even by Act of Parliament. Ireland’s woes may be said to be largely temperamental and still more largely “misfortunate.” Her very position in the geographical scheme of things is strikingly lonesome and unhappy. Practically she is the last outpost of Europe, and a little one at that. With sheer Atlantic on one side of her, and sixty miles of sea between herself and[9] England, it is impossible for her to get rid of a certain feeling of isolation which is not good for the spirits. The soft rain that is always over her may heighten the green of her meadows, but it keeps her damp and watery and preternaturally boggy. She has no harbors of the kind that are essential to fishermen, and though some of her ports may be admirable, there is little in the country that calls for the use of them. Thus physically handicapped, Ireland has necessarily produced a people who are in all respects a people to themselves. The religious faculty in them has been highly developed, the commercial faculty might seem to have been left out of their composition. By nature they are a simple, cheerful, unambitious, warm-hearted race, and they have suffered accordingly. Sir Francis Drake, or some instrument of his, planted the potato upon them. James I. planted the Scotch on them. George III. gave them a Lord Lieutenant and a Secretary. The potato, the Scotch, and Dublin[10] Castle have been the three bitter curses which have brought this people to the ghastliest social and political passes. All three are ineradicable, but they may be mitigated. This is what Ireland wants.