With regard to the alleged corrupt means by which the
Union was obtained, Sir Henry James regarded them as entirely irrele- vant to the great issue. "You may find," he said, "many reasons for opposing an improvident marriage ; but these are not reasons which are sufficient to justify a divorce when that marriage has been solemnised. I suppose that if, by some strange action of fate, we could have prevented the joining together of those unfortunate gentlemen the Siamese twins, we should have done so ; and yet the same reason would not have caused us to direct that the ligament which bound them together should be cut asunder." Sir Henry James quoted Macaulay's eloquent declaration that the Union should never be dissolved, —" Never till the four quarters of the world have been con- vulsed by the last struggle of the great British people for their place among the nations of the earth,"—and describing Sir William Harcourt as a Samson who had mischievously sent forth three hundred Home-rulers and Parnellites as firebrands, like Samson's foxes, to set the institutions of this country in a blaze, he caused great laughter by remarking that since Sir William had changed sides on the Irish Question, he had lost the secret of his former strength, and now resembled not so much the Samson of old, as Samoa "with a wig on,"-..the wig, we suppose, of the professional advocate replacing the natural hair of the born wrestler.
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