'In this gigantic body,' Macaulay exclaimed fifty-seven years ago, 'there is one vulnerable part near the heart.'[18] The Empire has expanded into ampler proportions than those described by the orator; its subject kings, dominations, princedoms, powers, above all, its myriads of many races and tongues, are united by far more durable ties than those which held it together in a generation that has passed away. Four years ago, Canada sent messengers from her great lakes, Hindustan representatives of her ancient dynasties, the great island continent envoys from her free nations, to do homage to Queen Victoria; the pageant, gathered 'within London's streaming roar,' was a magnificent spectacle of world-wide loyalty. England has seen another and a still more wonderful sight; the martial sons of our great self-governing colonies have flocked in thousands to do battle in her cause, in the distant and ill-known wastes of South Africa; in a long, bloody, and sometimes disastrous conflict, they have proved themselves to be worthy companions in arms of the offspring of the soldiery of Blenheim and Waterloo; they have fought and bled for England as if she was their common country. But Ireland, as regards the mass of the people, has, on both occasions, stood sullenly aloof; her heart has gone out in sympathy with the Boers; she remains, for the most part, hostile to our rule and disloyal. It is mere foolishness to shut our eyes to plain facts; still more so to join in the false pæans of interested partisans, and ignorant scribblers, who announce that because Ireland is, on the surface, comparatively at peace, she is in every sense a contented or a happy land, free from grave elements of political and social danger. She is still the 'vulnerable part at the heart of the Empire;' the spectre at the great national festival; the warning token, as in the case of the Oriental despot, that human grandeur and power are, in the nature of things, mortal. She is still, as she was in the day of Spenser, a malign influence across the path of our greatness, a riddle difficult to understand and interpret; the many problems she still presents to the statesman are perplexing in the extreme, and await solution. That any policy will suddenly remove the many evils apparent in her organic structure is a delusion a rational mind rejects; the deep-seated ills in that distempered frame may never be completely and finally cured. Something effectual, nevertheless, may, I think, be done; I proceed to examine, in the following chapters, the 'Present Irish Questions' that confront our rulers; and to consider what the amending hand may accomplish.