All the harshness of life will be dulcified; we shall lie dreaming on golden sands, dipping full goblets out of a sea that has been transmuted into lemonade.

This, the Utopian mood of humanity, is inextinguishable, and it has embroidered the Home Rule idea in common with all others.

Before the complexity of modern economic organisation was as well understood as is now the case, there is no doubt that certain sections of opinion in Ireland did regard self-government as a sort of Aladdin's Lamp, capable of any miracle.

The necessity of pressing all the energy of the nation into one channel had the effect of imposing on political life a simplicity which does not belong to it.

But all that is over and past.