8 THE IRISH AGRARIAN PROBLEM. 



vince. Protestant Ulster must, on the whole, 

 be considered separately from the Ireland of the 

 Irish problem. With its dour, hard-headed, in- 

 dustrious population, which gravitates principally 

 to Belfast, it is a land of modern industrial and 

 social structure. To no one who has ever seen 

 it, with the intensive economic life which appc 

 both in its agriculture and its industry, will it 

 seem an earthly paradise. One finds much 

 more resemblance to such a paradise in the 

 famine mountains of Connaught, where a race of 

 lotus-eaters is slowly dying out because in those 

 regions the lotus thrives but poorly. But Ulster 

 is a modern land with modern problems which 

 do not greatly differ from those of other West- 

 European countries. 



With the exception of Ulster, Ireland is to-day 

 still anti-English. Out of 103 members whom 

 it sends to London to the Imperial Parliament 

 there are always over 80 Nationalists, who regard 

 it as their mission to create difficulties for every 

 English Government,who judge all English ques- 

 tions only from the standpoint of Irish interests, 

 without regard to their intrinsic merits, and who 

 attach themselves to English parties only when 

 tangible advantages for Ireland are thereby to be 

 obtained. They systematically sympathise with 

 and applaud every foreign enemy of England, 

 not excepting even the horde of fanatics who 

 lately overran the Soudan and threatened Egypt ; 

 and they seek from time to time to render 

 English Parliament powerless and to discredit 



