They can, we see, pronounce a positive electoral
negative; yet even they, after the eighty and odd years of our domestic
perplexity, in the presence of the eighty and odd members pledged for
Home Rule, have been moved to excited inquiries regarding measures--short
of the obnoxious Bill. How much we suffer from sniffing the vain incense
of that word practical, is contempt of prevision! Many of the measures
now being proposed responsively to the fretful cry for them, as a better
alternative to correction by force of arms, are sound and just. Ten years
back, or at a more recent period before Mr. Parnell's triumph in the
number of his followers, they would have formed a basis for the
appeasement of the troubled land. The institution of county boards, the
abolition of the detested Castle, something like the establishment of a
Royal residence in Dublin, would have begun the work well. Materially and
sentimentally, they were the right steps to take. They are now proposed
too late. They are regarded as petty concessions, insufficient and
vexatious.
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