action of the United States and England, I should more aid the Irish than by all exclamations against one or the other. With the United States and England in union, the Continent of Europe would be republican. Then, though England remained monarchical, Ireland would be more free than it is now.”
It is a singular incident in Kossuth’s history, in connection with Irish affairs, that in one of his speeches he foreshadowed Gladstone’s Home Rule policy,—but upon the basis of a legislative assembly for each of the three principal countries, England, Scotland and Ireland. Thus did he indicate a public policy for Great Britain that has been accepted in part by the present government,—a policy that is to be accepted by the English nation and upon the broad basis laid down by a foreigner and sojourner, who had had only limited means for observation.
“If I were an Irishman, I would not have raised the standard of repeal, which offended the people of England, but the standard of municipal self-government against parliamentary omnipotence; not as an Irish question, but as a common question to all; and in this movement all the people of England and Scotland would have joined, and there now would have been a Parliament in England, in Ireland and Scotland. Such is the geographical position of Great Britain that its countries should be, not one, but united, each with its own parliament, but still one parliament for all.”
Although forty years have passed without the fulfillment of Kossuth’s prophetic declaration of a public policy, its realization is not only possible, but probable. To the American mind, with our experience and traditions, such a solution of the Irish question seems easy, practicable, safe. We have States larger than Ireland, States smaller than Ireland, in which the doctrine of self-government finds a practical application. Not free from evils, not free from maladministration; but if
