To any student, with patience sufficient for the task, the contemporary files of such journals as the _Times_ will furnish an exquisite chapter in the literature of obtuseness.

England sustained her No! with batons, bullets, plank-beds, Coercion courts, and an occasional halter; Ireland her Yes! with "agitation." Is it necessary to ask who won?
Is it necessary to trace step by step the complete surrender of the last ditchers of those days?
The fantastic and wicked dreams of the agitators have in thirty years translated themselves into Statute Law and solid fact.

An English statesman of the period, say Mr Balfour or Mr Wyndham, is fortunate if, with a few odd rags pilfered from the Land League wardrobe, he can conceal from history his utter poverty of ideas.
This, then, is the essential wisdom of Irish history: Ireland has won all along the line.

The Normans did not normanise her.

The Tudors did not exterminate her.