The journey of the Queen to Dublin in April, 1900, in recognition of the splendid services of her Irish troops in the Transvaal War, was the first that she had made to Ireland since 1861 ! But, surely, the gratifying warmth of the reception given her by all classes and conditions of the people, must have convinced the venerable Queen how greatly she had erred in never having set foot on Irish soil for nearly forty years, though traveling frequently to various parts of England, Scotland, and the Continent. Personal magnetism counts for much in the relations of sovereign and subjects, especially when the sovereign is a woman. The famous appeal of Maria Theresa to her Hungarian nobles is not the only instance where the presence of a royal woman, and a few words spoken by her lips, have roused her followers to prodigies of valor, and changed the fate of nations. On the contrary, indifference shown by Royalty toward any portion of its realm is never limited to the monarch's personality. Such an example is inevitably followed by the Court. It is not, therefore, surprising that absenteeism has been the bane of Ireland for centuries.

Dublin Castle, Clock Tower.

The Custom House, Dublin.

Few intelligent Englishmen of the present day would hesitate to characterize the treatment of the American colonies by George III. in 1775 as unwise and tyrannical; and perhaps nearly as many well-informed and fair-minded subjects of the Queen would now be willing to confess that.

England's mode of ruling Ireland in the past finds little justification either in common sense or in the laws of God and man. The Poet Laureate, Alfred Austin, for example, has recently written: "No one can read the history of the economic relations of Great Britain with Ireland during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, without feeling, if he has any sense of justice, that reparation is due to Ireland for the monstrous commercial fetters in which it was then for so long a period bound; and any assistance wisely and discriminately given to Ireland for the purpose of stimulating material amelioration will be neither a bribe nor a dole, but the restoration of something owing." Such confessions from English scholars and statesmen do not humiliate Great Britain. They exalt her. They are equivalent to saying that the British Government has grown wiser and more just with time, and is desirous of making her past faults and failures stepping-stones to a higher plane of racial equity, religious toleration, and political fair-dealing. At all events, it is only too evident to an unprejudiced observer that the principal cause of Ireland's misery has been bad government. Herpoverty, starvation, cruelties, riots, emigrations, and rebellions have been almost entirely due to conduct on the part of England, which frequently was little short of madness. Here was a sister island, difficult to subdue by force, and easily made rebellious by injustice. It should, therefore, have been the first aim of the British Government to harmonize the business interests of the two peoples. Commercial concord would then have quickly spun across the Irish Sea strong threads of gold and silver, which would have knit the islands into a close union, and proved far more enduring than the stoutest fetters of oppression; for "He who overcomes By force, hath overcome but half his foe." But, as the slightest study of the subject will abundantly prove, Ireland's cattle and dairy trades, her shipping interests, and above all her splendid woolen manufactures, instead of being encouraged, were one by one destroyed for the benefit of English competitors; till, in the first half of the eighteenth century, the condition of the Irish peasantry was the most pitiable in Europe, and along every highway Famine drove starving beggars by thousands to the coast, and with her ers, or a diminution of their revenues. It is interference with their religion. Unquestionably another powerful cause of Ireland's suffering and discontent has been religious intolerance. The bitter conflict between Catholics and Protestants which so long desolated England and the Continent naturally spread to Ireland, and made of it for many generations a scene of sanguinary struggles of more than usual intensity. In the state of opinion then prevailing throughout Europe, whichever religious party became dominant in any country felt obliged to persecute its opponent. The orthodoxy of one was always the heresy of the other. In most lands, however, the persecuted party represented the minority; but in Ireland, while the governing Power was Protestant, the vast majority of the inhabitants were Catholics.