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But the Sinn Feiners are not all republicans. Many 
of them who denounce the Home Rule Act—secured 
by the arduous and protracted struggle of the Irish 
Party as an effective solution of the Irish question— 
profess to believe that it is only in Repeal of the 
Union and the restoration of “Grattan’s Parliament” 
that the true remedy is to be found. Remembering 
how long the Irish question has been before the 
public, how exhaustively it has been discussed and 
dissected, it strikes one as strange that even at the 
present hour the vital distinction between Home 
Rule and Repeal of the Union should be so little 
understood. There are intelligent Englishmen who 
believe that Home Rule would be the sure forerunner 
of separation; there are intelligent Irishmen who 
believe that the restoration of Grattan’s Parliament 
would be a greater boon to Ireland than Home Rule. 
A very little accurate knowledge of the subject 
demonstrates the absurdity of either view. The 
acceptance of Home Rule is an absolute bar to 
separation; the restoration of Grattan’s Parliament 
as it existed before the Union is both undesirable 
and impossible, 
From the first it was manifest that the Union forced 
on the Nation by corruption, fraud, and violence 
meant ruin for Ireland. Naturally, the “Repeal of the 
Union” was the form in which the remedy first pre- 
sented itself to the Irish people. Within ten years 
O’Connell inaugurated his Repeal agitation, never 
wavering from the declaration in his speech against 
the Union that, as a Catholic, he “would willingly 
purchase that Repeal by the imposition of the Penal 
Code in all its unmitigated ferocity.” But the agita- 
tion was foredoomed to failure. In Repeal of the 
Union ultimate separation was inevitably involved, 
and separation can never be wrung from England 
except by armed force. When Butts great Home 
Rule Conference was held in the Rotunda, in Novem-