The old ways, in so far as they meant the old friendships, she might hope to restore, although the friendship would, half consciously, take on a new accent; personality would count for more in it, position for less. But the old relation which authorised a kind-hearted landlord to feel that his tenants had "deserted him" because they voted against his wish in an election--that is gone for ever; and gone, at all events, for the present, is the local leadership of the gentry.
I question whether it is realised that in parting from that leadership Ireland lost what was in a sense Home Rule. In the "yesterday" of which I write Ireland was governed in all its parochial and most intimate affairs by a class or a caste; but that governing class was Irish--Irish with a limitation, no doubt, yet still indisputably Irish. When that rule perished, when that class lost its local ascendancy, government became the bastard compromise that we have known, with power inharmoniously divided between officialdom and agitators. The law was framed and administered by officials, often English or Scotch, possessing no authority except what the law conferred on them. Authority lay very largely with popular leaders; but leadership and authority alike were purely personal, depending on a man's own qualities and the support which they evoked. No man was born to it as of right, and such authority is far more precarious than the established power of a governing class. This is a weakness in all democratically-governed countries, but where there is self-government, the individual, in entering upon office, acquires the support and the prestige of a long-established machinery of power. He ceases to be merely the individual when he becomes part of the Government. For the Irish leaders this reinforcement to the personal authority has never existed; they have been at a terrible disadvantage as compared with all other democratic politicians; and consequently the power exercised by them has always, except perhaps at Parnell's zenith, been far less than was the combined authority of the gentry before the landlord rule was broken. Those who shared in that authority acted, and could afford to act, with unquestioning confidence; they were surer of themselves, than is any popular leader or any official in Ireland of to-day. It seldom occurred to them to ask whether their conduct in any juncture might meet with approval; being a law to other people, they were naturally a law to themselves, and an Irish law. Their power was excessive, and demoralised them by its lack of limitation; yet many of the qualities which it bred, made them an element of great value in the country. These qualities are by no means extinct in their kindred, nor is the tradition of their right to leadership forgotten.