62 THE LAND QUESTION.
of the Irish people against the English people is to doom it to failure. To make it the common cause of the people everywhere against a system which everywhere oppresses and robs them is to make its success assured. Had this been made to appear, the Irish members would not have stood alone when it came to the final resistance to coercion. Had this been made to appear, Great Britain would be in a ferment at the proposal to give the government despotic powers. If the Irish leaders are wise, they may yet avail themselves of the rising tide of British democracy. Let the Land Leaguers adopt the noble maxim of the German Social Democrats. Let them be Land Leaguers first, and Irishmen afterward. Let them account him an enemy of their cause who seeks to pander to prejudice and arouse hate. Let them arouse to a higher love than the mere love of country; to a wider patriotism than that which exhausts itself on one little sub-division of the human race, one little spot on the great earth's surface ; and in this name, and by this sign, call upon their brothers, not so much to aid them, as to strike for themselves.
The Irish people have the same inalienable right to govern themselves as have every other people; but the full recognition of this right need not necessarily involve separation, and to talk of separation first is to arouse pas- sions that will be utilized by the worst enemies of Ireland. The demand for the full political rights of the Irish people will be the stronger if it be made to line with and include the demand for the full political rights of the unenfran- chised British people. And it must be remembered that all the tendencies of the time are not to separation, but to integration; not to independence, but to interdepen- dence. This is observable wherever modern influences reach, and in all things. To attempt to resist it is to attempt to turn back the tide of progress.
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