As early as 1865, John Bright had suggested that the Conservative and ...

As early as 1865, John Bright had suggested that the Conservative and Liberal leaders should bring forward a joint scheme for the government of Ireland.' It is not easy to conceive the formula on which they could have come together, unless it was that, as the Irish would be content with nothing short of Home Rule, they had better have it at once, with the reservation that, as they would not long be content with Home Rule, they had better not have it at all.

But

the formula would

have had to provide for the facts that a certain part, whether large or small, of the Irish people was definitely hostile to the English connection, that socially and economically the structure of England and Ireland was fundamentally different, and that what England and the Scottish Lowlands, which had shared and in part directed her development, regarded as normal, was in fact a peculiarity of their own.

Nowhere else in the world had the factory system of capitalist, manager, and labourer been so thoroughly applied to the land: nowhere else was the cultivator a precarious tenant of the soil he cultivated.

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