undeniably true that the great bulk of the Australian colonists are now, as they were from the first, steadily opposed to any scheme of Irish Home Rule that has yet been formulated.
A few years ago a very remarkable discussion was originated in the pages of an Australian magazine by a Victorian gentleman, Mr. A. M. Topp, whose essay (Melbourne Review, January 1881), entitled "English Institutions and the Irish Race," excited very general interest throughout the colonies. If Mr. Gladstone and Sir William Harcourt will be good enough to endeavour to recall the scenes in the House of Commons that led to the expulsion of Mr. Parnell and thirty-six of his followers, they may perhaps understand why we colonists, about that time, were so eagerly discussing the Irish Question.
It was doubtless the earlier achievements of the Irish Parliamentary Party, emphasised by boycotting in Ireland and dynamite from America, that led Mr. Topp, who is no party politician, but a thoughtful historical student, first to turn his acute mind to this subject. The Irish Question is, according to Mr. Topp, primarily one of race. He sees in the dynamite, the boycotting, the Land League, and the Irish obstruction in the
