Ireland's Wrongs Righted, or the Present Against the Past.

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,—

If any apology be necessary for my appearance before you to-night, I must ask you to find it in the fact that I am here in reply to a challenge from my reverend friend Mr Isitt, who has had the first word on the subject of Ireland, and who is now fulfilling his promise to preside whenever I should take up the gauntlet that he had thrown down. It is my misfortune that, through illness, I was prevented from performing, as I would cheerfully have done, the first part of my compact, namely, to preside at the lecture delivered by my friend on "The Wrongs of Ireland;" and that I was prevented from listening to the arguments to which I had engaged to reply, But, happily for all of us, the reports of the Press admit, in effect, the whole colony to every platform, and place on the same level those who are absent and those who are present to listen. The loss therefore that I have sustained is mainly one of high gratification to myself. I am no stranger to the oratory of Mr Isitt. I know what you must have enjoyed in listening to him, and I can very well imagine the fire of his philippics and the vigour of his invective when he spoke to you of the wrongs of Ireland. Ladies and gentlemen, I make no pretension to the eloquence of which my friend is so great a master, and I know the disadvantage at which I stand in Blowing him. There is one point of superiority, however, on page 6 which I reckon. I think honestly that I have to advocate a better cause, and, not by rhetoric, but by the force of facts, I shall endeavour to overthrow the somewhat insubstantial fabric that my friend has set up.

I feel myself, Mr Chairman, in rather a difficult and delicate position to-night. It is clear that I cannot address you in direct criticism of yourself. That would be inconsistent alike with courtesy and with the established relation between a chairman and the person by whom he is addressed. I as therefore, with your leave, going to conjure up for the occasion a third person, a reverend Mr Isitt, truly, but a gentlemen without the suspicion of relationship to the chairman of this meeting. Of that gentleman and his lecture I purpose to speak to you, and if permitted, I shall do so with a great deal of freedom.

The first question then to be asked is, what object had my antagonist in view in dilating to the people of Invercargill on the wrongs of Ireland? It could not have been the desire to create a mere sensation or to stir up feeling inconsistent with Christian love and brotherhood. Whenever Mr Isittopens his lips in public it is with a high moral purpose, and I must acquit him of the remotest design to awaken evil or vindictive passion. Yet, unquestionably, putting aside such an object as unworthy and alien altogether from the charter of the speaker, it is difficult to discover any purpose that would justify the setting forth at a great crisis of our national history the minute and harrowing details of former strife and enmity between two branches of a now united people: the ranging once more in imaginary antagonism two races that since that strife was waged have fought under the same flag, have marched to the same victories, and here, at least, are living in one common brotherhood. Sir, until I can distinguish some end to be served higher and more definite than any that has been made clear in the course of the reverend gentle man's eloquent denunciations, I must take leave to say that he has been unfaithful—however unconsciously—to the principles that he himself has laid down. Mr Isitt is reported in the same address to have condemned emphatically the odious perpetuation of national feuds. He deprecated, as I should de the flaunting in our streets of the faded banners of the [unclear: Boyre] and those insignia of party hatreds and party triumphs that page 7 ought to find nothing but a grave in a country such as ours—a country that belongs neither to Celt nor to Saxon, to Catholic nor to Orangeman, but is the inheritance of the common offshoots of the British race. That was a beautiful passage, and worthy of its author, in which he blessed and commended the spirit of peace and world-wide goodwill, and adjured his audience to remember injuries only that they might be for given But again I ask, has the reverend gentleman kept in memory his own precept? To what can his burning rehearsal of ancient injuries lead except to the reproduction of such felling as inflicted those injuries and to the creation of two hostile camps in our little commonwealth? Where is the difference between those that shout for "Derry and the Boyne" and the reverend gentleman who holds up England to execration for deeds of the half-forgotten past? If I am told that it is with a political object that these old memories are revived, then I answer that the field of politics even is not exempt from the scope of those maxims of charity to which such eloquent expression has been given.

But I go further, and say without imputing the slightest motive of unfairness, that if the story of Ireland's wrongs was intended to carry political weight, then the balance should have been struck with an equal hand. What are we to think of the historic impartiality of a narrator who has spoken freely of massacre when Catholics were the victims; who has drawn a revolting picture of unequal and oppressive laws enacted by Saxon against Celt; and who yet is absolutely silent about that dark and terrible tragedy, the Catholic rising of 1641, which gave the key-note and the colour to the after history of Ireland? Sir, I am not going to imitate the tactics of my opponent; I am not going to thrill you with the details of that fierce rising in Ulster and in other parts of Ireland in which the Catholic Chiefs played the part of fiends, and the forces, as it were of Hell, were let loose on the unhappy Protestants. I will not attempt to strike a balance between the cruelties and the tyrannies of opposing factions. But surely you ought to know—surely Mr Isitt should have told you—that the wrongs of Ireland, that the oppression, if you will, of Ireland, arose, not out of English malignity, but out of the wild and inhuman excesses of the Irish race itself. I must ask leave, Sir, to give you a picture of the condition of Ireland page 8 and of the mind of England towards Ireland before the great convulsion to which I have just referred.

Speaking of the condition of Ireland after the accession of James I to the English throne, Froude says:—"If the meaning of government be the protection of the honest and laborious and the punishment of knaves, not the smallest gainers from the Ulster settlement were the worthy among the Irish themselves, who were saved at last from the intolerable oppression under which they and their fathers from imm morial time had groaned. Privileges and prohibitions, which had separated the two races, were abolished, so far as statutes could extinguish them, and Irish and English were declared equal in the eye of the law." And he quotes an Irish statute of the same reign, which is in the following terms:—Whereas in former times after the conquest of the realm by his Majesty's royal progenitors, Kings of England, the natives of this realm of Irish blood, being descended of those that did inherit and possess the land before the said conquest were for the most part in continual hostility with the English and with those that did descend of the English, and there fore the said Irish were held and accounted and in diverse statutes and records were termed Irish enemies: Forasmuch as the cause of the said difference and of making the said laws and statutes doth now cease, in that all the natives and inhabitants of this Kingdom without difference or distinction are taken into his Majesty's protection and do now live undr one law; by means whereof a perfect agreement is or ought to be settled betwixt all his Majesty's subjects in this realm: And forasmuch as there is no better means to settle peace and tranquillity in this kingdom, being now inhabited with many worthy persons born in his Majesty's several kingdoms then by abolishing the said laws and giving them free liberty to commerce and match together, so that they may grow into one nation, and there be an utter oblivion and extinguishment of all former difference and disorder between them: be it enacted . . . that all these laws be for ever repealed." Irish Statutes 13, James I, Cap. 5.—That, Sir, was the course on which England had entered with regard to Ireland when it was interrupted by the lawless turbulence of Irishmen themselves and by the crowning infamy of 1641.

But I come down to modern times. And, looking at these page 9 surely, in contrast with the wrongs of Ireland, we might have heard something of the beneficent legislation by which those wrongs had been redressed. To that task I shall endeavour, lower feebly, to set myself by and by.

In the meantime, as I am challenging the reverend gentle-Ban's method of dealing with his subject, I may refer to his handling of one of the prominent features of the struggle now being waged between the Government and the National League in Ireland. I mean the practice of "boycotting," a practice Dot has made thousands of innocent lives miserable and has turned the country where it has been practised into one great pandemonium of hatred. How has the reverend lecturer dealt with that manifest invasion of one of the commonest rights of citizenship and humanity? He has not condemned it. He is reported to have said that "he did not say boycotting was right "or wrong, but he would say that if it was right out of Ireland it was right in Ireland." Now, Sir, I am safe in saying that not only was this an evasion of the responsibility he had undertaken, but a notable departure also from the reverend gentleman's habit of dealing with great questions of right and wrong. Mr Isitt is the keeper of the conscience—of course in a Protestant sense—of a large and intelligent section of this community. But besides this, having assumed the office of censor inorum of English Governments, past and present, he became a kind of guide likewise of the conscience of the public. Had we not, then, a right to a distinct and categorical deliverance on this interesting point of morals, and am I wrong in saying that had not his subject been one that required great tenderness towards the Irish people, his clients for the time, a decision would have been given in no doubtful form? Mr Isitt is no mean dialectician. He is quite capable of determining a question of casuistry, and, when he has made up his mind, he is not celebrated for keeping his opinion to himself. He does not deal in a gingerly way with the question of slavery. He does not deal tenderly with the drink traffic. He is not content with saying that if slavery is wrong in Morocco it is wrong in Brazil; and if selling drink is wrong in London, it is wrong in New York. No! He tells us that these things are wrong absolutely and wrong everywhere, and launches against them his boldest and most incisive words. In like manner ought he to have spoken out against one of page 10 the ugliest blots that have disfigured the Home Rule agitation in Ireland. And here let me remark it is this want of moral fibre on the part of so many guides of public opinion, particularly amongst the Protestant clergy, that has given much of its strength to the Home Rule cause. Instead of robust denunciation of the methods of the League, where these set at defiance the elementary principles of justice and order, we have too often the utterance of flaccid and sickly sentiment and almost a connivance at wrong. I have looked in vain through the reported utterances of my reverend friend for one hearty, emphatic, unequivocal word of condemnation of the crime by which, as its main instrument, the Home Rule agitation is upheld. And what, Sir, have we to set against this conspicuous failure of duty on the part of these guardians of public morals within the pale of Protestanism? Why, the illustrious example of the Head of the Roman Catholic Church Pope Leo the XIII has not shirked the question of boycotting but, to his eternal honour, has set upon it the seal of his unqualified condemnation. But this decision of the Roman Pontiff is too important a factor in the Home Rule controversy to be dealt with in a parenthesis, and I shall ask your further attention to it when I have to speak of the characteristics of the National League.

I pass at present to a still graver charge than any I have yet made against my reverend friend. Let me quote from the Southland Times, verbatim, the account given by Mr Isitt of the present political standing of the people of Ireland. "Under the coercion policy of to-day," says the report, "Ireland is refused the elementary right of freedom. Her sons may was meet even to protest against the military despotism under which they live—freedom of speech is denied them on the plat form and through the Press. Irish members may kid napped at the doors of the House of Commons and shuffled off to gaol in Ireland for using expressions in that land such as are uttered with impunity at every Liberal meeting in England." Now, Sir, that is a very eloquent passage, and, I will add, a very inflammatory one, when spoken in the ears of Irishmen. But, ladies and gentlemen, let me assure you without the slightest imputation on the good faith of my excellent and reverend friend, that there is not one line, that there is not one word, in the statement that an examination of page 11 facts will sustain. Not that I would attribute to Mr Isitt the intention in any one particular to mislead or misinstruct his audience; but I do charge him without any hesitation with Having "spoken unadvisedly with his lips;" and I challenge him to produce any act of the British Government that will bear out a single charge that in the words quoted he has levelled against British rule in Ireland.

The matter is vital, and I will take the statements severally in their order. The first is that "under the coercion policy of to-day Ireland is refused the elementary right of freedom." Now, Sir, to begin with, I deny that the Irish policy of to-day can with any fairness be described as a policy of coercion, unless all policy be coercion that holds force in reserve for the ultimate execution of the law. Force—physical force—is and most be at the back of all law. And to use the term coercion as one of peculiar reproach of procedure in Ireland against crime is simply to resort to an odious nickname and a reprehesible misuse of words. Sir, there is just the coercion in Ireland that exists in the countries to which she is united—not more and not less—inasmuch as in all those countries alike the police and the soldiery can be called into requisition to quell active opposition to the law. That is the whole case as far as the principle of coercion is concerned. I will come by and by to the exceptional instances in which the existing law in England and the law in Ireland differ from one another. I simply repeat that the coercive power of the law in England and in Ireland is precisely the same in character and precisely the same in degree.

I have next to deal with the assertion that "Ireland is refused the elementary right of freedom." Of course that refusal is assumed to have been made through the criminal Law and Procedure Act for Ireland passed in 1887. T will there-He call your attention in a very few words to the objects and sanctions of that Act and to its provisions, and I will leave it to you, ladies and gentlemen, to say whether in these there is the shadow of an attack on any elementary right of freedom, What were the circumstances under which that Act was passed? It was, as Mr Isitt well knows, under no normal condition of things such as exists in the sister countries of England, Scotland, and Wales. Society was dislocated in every joint by the action of a League that held Ireland in page 12 terror, that paralysed industry, that made free action, political, social and commmercial, impossible, and that organised crime; by a League whose doctrines were the gospel of plunder whose leaders, by their own avowal, were engaged in making lawful government in Ireland impossible; and, who, in the words of Mr Gladstone himself, were "marching through rapine to the disintegration of the empire." Law had been superseded by the dictates of a secret and irresponsible tribunal to the scope of whose real coercion no limit was acknowledged and no exception allowed. This, Sir, was the state of things that called for whatever is abnormal, whatever is exceptional in the administration of criminal law in Ireland I ask Mr Isitt, did the elementary right of freedom exist under the sway of the National League? Was there not under that body a coercion that, besides being unsanctioned by law, was more daring, more absolute, more truly opposed to every right of freedom, elementary or other, than those necessary, moderate and constitutional restraints that the Government demanded to meet a great crisis of national disorder. Sir, I have read the Crimes Act from beginning to end, and you will perhaps be surprised to learn that what, mainly, that great instrument of tyranny does is to provide for the suppression of societies in regard to which the Lord Lieutenant and his Privy Council have satisfied themselves—

1st.	That they are formed for the commission of crimes.
2nd.	That they are carrying on operations for or by the commission of crimes.
3rd.	That they are promoting or inciting to acts of violence or intimidation.
4th.	That they are interfering with the administration of the law.

Beyond this, provision is made for shifting in case of need, is the interest of fair trial, the place of assize from one country to another; and for the summary prosecution of any person knowingly taking part in a prohibited meeting or publishing the objects of such meeting. Also a warrant directing search for arms or ammunition in houses or other buildings is made valid under the Act. And it is provided that the summary jurisdiction allowed by the Act shall be jurisdiction by a divisional justice or two resident magistrates. Appeal from their decision to be to a County Court Judge and the Chairman of page 13 Sessions, or to the Recorder as sole judge. That, Sir, is substantially the whole of the terrible Crimes Act against which such indignant thunder has been launched. And as respects the punishments awarded to those convicted under it, they are, I understand, greatly more lenient than are awarded in England for similar breaches of the law. This, further, is to be especially noted, that contrary to a common belief and a contention of the separatist partisans, the Act in question creates no new crime. The offences against which it is aimed are crimes in England just as they are crimes in Ireland; only a different, that is to say a summary, method of dealing with them has been dictated by the social condition of Ireland. These statements pre not made at random. They are made on the very highest authority, that namely of Lord Selborne, some time Lord Chancellor, and of Sir Richard Webster, the present Attorney-General of England. I think that I have advanced enough to enable you to decide the issue between Mr Isitt and myself, and I feel confident you will determine that neither in Irish law nor its administration is there a trace of interference with the elementary right of freedom.

Mr Isitt's next sentence is perhaps more extraordinary still. "Her sons," he says, "may not meet even to protest against the military despotism under which they live—freedom of speech is denied them on the platform and through the Press." My reply is simply that such a thing as military despotism does not exist in Ireland. I do not like to apply strong language to any statement of my reverend friend, but it is clear he must have used the term military despotism without any definite conception of what the words imply. Military despotism is that method of government which supersedes ordinary civil law, and acts on its own authority, without reference to a civil tribunal. Sir, is that the state of affairs in Ireland? Has civil law given place there to military law? Can any military authority on Irish ground move hand or foot except at the instance and under the sanction of the civil administrator? No! The military power is not the mister; it is the mere executor of the law; under it and not above it; the servant and not the despot. Let me assure Mr Isitt that here in Invercargill, in free, almost republican New Zealand, he lives as much under a military despotism as they do in Ireland. And my friend may discover this any day if page 14 he chooses to make the necessary experiment. Let him only refuse to pay his rent; let him subject himself to a summons of ejectment; let him surround himself, in resistance to that summons, with a crowd of sympathisers large enough and violent enough to endanger the public peace. Let him induce his friends to oppose with deadly weapons the officers of the law—and I promise him, if the police force be not sufficient to quell the riot, then the Volunteers of Invercargill will be summoned in aid of the police, and the recusant will find himself the self-made victim of precisely the same military despotism that he tells you is confined to the shores of Ireland!

"Freedom of speech is denied to Irishmen on the platform "and through the Press." Freedom of speech, Sir, the right to speak at all, is assuredly denied to Irishmen when they meet as members of a certain society, in any place where that society, for the reasons already stated, has been prohibited from meeting by proclamation of the law; and they are denied the right of assembly and speech wherever their meeting and speaking would in the opinion of the constituted authority lead to a breach of the public peace. But this restriction! its principle, is common to both England and Ireland, and is an elementary canon of government. To say broadly they freedom of speech on the platform is denied to Irishmen is simply to contradict the facts of every-day experience in Ireland. In the City of Dublin—everywhere that the National League has not been suppressed by proclamation, the Irish leaders address their countrymen with a freedom or rather with a license of speech that would not be tolerated by any government elsewhere in the civilised world. The ruling powers are assailed with a bitterness, an energy, and I was bound to add, often with an eloquence of invective that are probably without a parallel beyond the limits of Ireland And all this without the Government's moving a finger to stop the torrent of vituperation and hate. Mr Balfour, the courageous and undaunted administrator of the law in Ireland when he speaks at all, meets the daily assaults of personal abuse and obloquy with a calmness and a sarcasm that are

Note.—I am now given to understand that, the N.Z. Volunteers are specially exempted from liability to assist the civil power. But if a regiment of [unclear: the] happened to be at hand in the circumstances supposed, its services world be availed of: so the illustration loses none of its force.

page 15 more effective than a hundred prosecutions. He lets the platform orators bellow as they will, and goes on quietly with that task of resolute enforcement of the law that is slowly but surely working out the pacification of Ireland. But what about the Press—the fettered Press of Ireland! Surely Mr Isitt must be unaware of the existence of such publications as the Irish World, the Freeman's Journal, United Ireland and a host of others advocating the sentiments of the League. It is true they are not permitted to publish the proceedings of meetings of the League that have been held in defiance of government proclamation. But if my friend will look into their columns for a month he will find them teeming with denunciations of the British Government and with the distinetest treason against the British Crown. He will find them not only politically unfettered, but exceeding in their rancorous contempt of authority all bounds of decency and decorum. Such a study, if it do not provoke a criticism on the unbridled license, will at least silence effectually any pathetic lamentation over the slavery of the Irish Press.

The last statement to be noticed is a very extraordinary one. The Irish Members may be kidnapped at the door of the House of Commons and shuffled off to a gaol in Ireland for wing expressions in that land such as are uttered with immunity at every liberal meeting in England." It is certainly not too much to say that not one word in this sentence will stand the test of fact. I have looked into the dictionary for a definition of the word "kidnap," and I find "kidnapping" to mean "the act of stealing or forcible abduction of a human being from his own country or state." And I find abduction to mean, in law, "taking away by fraud, persuasion, or open violence." I need not argue the point. Having respect to the English language, and having respect to the facts of the case, is it allowable, even to platform oratory, to aver that an Irish member is "kidnapped" when by process of ordinary law—by the same process by which every man charged with crime or misdemeanour is apprehended—he is, either at the door of the House of Commons or anywhere else, laid hold of and earned off to Ireland? If there are any two things absolutely the opposite of one another—any two that by accurate definition exclude and destroy one another, they are, the process of kidnapping and apprehension by form of law. To page 16 make use of an illustration for which I am indebted to another it would be just as allowable to say that Ned Kelly was kidnapped and murdered in Victoria as that Mr Gilhooly was kidnapped when he was arrested at the door of the House of Commons and persecuted when he was dealt with in Ireland according to the law. I acquit Mr Isitt of any intention to misapply terms, but I accuse him of very great carelessness in the use of them, and I submit that he ought not to be case less when he is impugning the justice of the Government of his country. But the conclusion of the statement is that these kidnapped men "were shuffled off to gaol for using expressions that are uttered with impunity at every liberal meeting "in England." It would be tedious, after all that has been said, if I were to insist that it was for no utterance of liberal sentiments that the men in question were laid hold of, but for committing an unlawful act and for inciting their fellow countrymen to a breach of the law. These men might have shouted liberal and even treasonable sentiments until they were hoarse, if they had done so within the limits—wide enough in all conscience—that the Executive permits in Ireland, but they were not to be allowed to fly in the face of a statute that it concerned both the dignity of the Government and the safety of society to maintain.

The allegation that "the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland is armed with authority such as a Governor of Poland might envy" I trust I may treat as a rhetorical flourish, unworthy of serious argument. I do not grudge it to Mr Isitt [unclear: as] embellishment of his discourse, unless on the ground that charges against the Government of England, when that Government is engaged in an arduous struggle with disorder that may any day become rebellion ought to be framed less with a regard to the exigencies of oratory than to the rigorous obligation of fact. I contend, Sir, that in dealing with this the most direct and serious portion of Mr Isitt's accusation against the present government of Ireland, I have demolished sentence by sentence, and even word by word, every single count of his indictment, and I will leave this part of the subject with a single personal remark. I venture to think that instead of his becoming the caricaturist and the defamer of English justice—instead of his holding up to obloquy and contempt the action of English administrators in their en page 17 daevour to protect the helpless and to free Ireland from a curse greater than she is able to bear we had a right to claim Mr Isitt, as a Christian minister—I will not say, as a Protestant minister, for in this matter the Catholic and the Protestant clergy have an equal duty to perform—we had a right to claim him in his character of a Christian minister, as an upholder and defender of the law. I say, Sir, without hesitation, that if the principle involved in the reverend gentleman's course of action were to guide largely the conduct of his pantrymen, all that is best and soundest in the national character and all that is of value in the constitution would perish and disappear.

And now I have gone through the disagreeable part of my duty—that of traversing many of the statements of my exigent friend. I trust I have done so without hurting his feelings or in any way giving him offence, and I shall proceed to discuss the question of modern English legislation for Ire-fend and the question of Home Rule.

It may be asked, Sir, what we at this side of the world have to do with the Irish question. Can we not leave it to others, and why should we array any New Zealand community in hostile camps on a matter that belongs to Great Britain and Ireland and to Great Britain and Ireland alone? The answer is easy. And it is, first, that Ireland has herself appealed to the colonies, even by sending emissaries among them to advocate the popular cause; and second, that nothing that affects the dignity, the honour, and the integrity of the empire can be of indifference to colonists or out of the range of subjects on which they ought to pronounce a verdict.

I will only say further, as a preliminary, that although I shall not be able to utter such smooth things as my friend, who is on the popular side, has done, it would be a mistake to suppose that anything I have to say will be spoken in hostility to Ireland or to Irishmen. I love Ireland, and will not yield to my reverend friend in devotion to her interests or in admiration of the noble qualities of her sons and daughters. It is not from any indifference, far less from any hostile feeling that Unionists oppose the claim of Home Rule for Ireland, but because they see in that claim neither benefit to Ireland herself nor safety to the empire of which she forms a part.

With regard to the wrongs of Ireland of which you have heard so much, it is not necessary for my argument that they should be either palliated or denied. I certainly am not here to defend the treatment of Ireland by the English Government for a great portion of the last 400 years. While far from holding Ireland herself guiltless, as I have already declared, let us grant the truth of the indictment that has bees brought against English rule in the now distant past. Let a grant that for centuries that rule was harsh, and in many points cruel and unjust. What then? Does it follow that the mutual animosities and fierce struggles of those barbarous times are to dictate and govern the political feeling of to-day! Is it wise to rekindle national hatred and attempt to shape modern policy by the heat of ancient feuds that had nigh burned themselves out, and of which, if undisturbed, the last spark would soon be extinguished. We are pointed to those old days of oppression and asked if it be possible for Ireland to forget and forgive. The answer lies in reminding Ireland that she herself is far from blameless, and in inviting her to turn from the bitter memories of the past to the ample at comment of modern times. Let Irishmen run their eye over the more recent pages of their country's history, and what will they discover? They will be reminded that within the present century, within the bust sixty years, the conduct of the English nation towards Ireland has been one long effort of conciliations of legislative amelioration, of concession and redress. They will have to admit that, not only, within sixty years, have the great and clamant wrongs of Ireland been one after another determined, but that reform after reform, privilege after privilege, indulgence after indulgence have been granted to her until every vestige of ancient injustice has been swept away and she stands at this moment among the freest and most liberally governed nations in the world. Those who look impartially on the conditions of English rule in Ireland will find it impossible to put their finger on a single political grievance under which Ireland is suffering at the present hour. In 1829 Catholic Emancipation was conceded to the people of Ireland In 1868 the Irish Protestant Church Establishment, and with it the Tithe system that had so often brought Ireland to the verge of rebellion, was swept away. In 1870 a land law for Ireland of exceptional liberality was passed by the English page 19 Parliament at the instance of Mr Gladstone. In 1881 another land act was passed, giving to the tenant fixity of tenure, freedom of sale, and a fair rent. This act may be described as even revolutionary in its character, so daringly did it invade what had hitherto been regarded as the rights of a proprietor in the land. It was passed in defiance of the principles, as they had always been read, of political economy, and amounted really to a confiscation in part of the landlord's property in the soil. This may have been necessary in the interests of humanity; it may have been necessary in the interest of public policy; and it may have been necessary to secure the peace of Ireland. These propositions need not be denied; hut it may I think be asserted that a great and liberal boon to the Irish tenant, a great measure of public policy, and a supreme effort to make Irishmen loyal and contented ought to have come from the hands of Parliament at the expense, not of the landlord, but of the State. Contrary to all just policy, contrary to the usage of the British and every other civilized legislature, the tenants of Ireland were relieved, the public feeling was propitiated, and the loyalty of the discounted was bidden for, at the private and individual cost of the proprietors of the soil. But this is not the main point at which I am aiming. I am striving to show all that has been done for the tenantry of Ireland—that for their sake every principle that hitherto had been held to govern the relation of landlord and tenant was strained or set aside; and that the act of 1881, with modifications that have followed and to which I need not particularly refer, has placed the various holders of Irish land in a better position than those of any other nation in the civilized world. There is no hardship under which an Irish tenant may lie from which he cannot be freed simply by applying to the proper tribunal; and, so far from, being the object of pity that he is sometimes represented to be, this interesting individual may be fitly designated the Spoilt child of the British State. Amongst his many privileges mention should be made of a right of purchase secured to him, under Lord Ashbourne's Act. It is actually true, although it seems almost incredible, that a tenant desiring to obtain the freehold of his farm may, if he can come to terms with his landlord, become the proprietor by paying for forty mine years an annual sum 25 per cent, less than the rent page 20 judicially fixed. "Repeated Legislation," says the London Times in one of its leaders, "has placed the Irish tenants is a position far more favourable than is enjoyed by any other set of men on the face of the earth, and the Plan of Campaign is absolutely devoid of the justification or excuse for violent courses sometimes drawn from irremediable wrongs."

The narative of facts that I have given and this comment on some of them must be my brief reply to all argument founded on the wrongs of Ireland. It will be seen that the unkindness of the past has disappeared. The hearts of Englishmen and Scotchmen beat kindly towards their Irish brethren. If I may venture to apply, as I do without irreverence, the words of Scripture—" Old things are passed away "behold, all things are become new." In times of famine the hand of England has been stretched forth with unstinted liberality towards her suffering sister. There is no part of the British Dominions where an Irishman may not stand side by side with the sons of St. Andrew and St. George—equal in rights, competing for the same honours, upheld by the same sympathy, and with no distinguishing badge of nationality but what he himself chooses to wear. Is it too much to ask of men thus sharing in all the privileges of citizenship in the leading nation of the world to be content with those privilege and all that they signify, and to show towards the British Crown that loyalty and devotion that Englishmen and Scotch men have long delighted to confess.

But I have merely cleared the way for consideration of the great question of Home Rule, which embodies the latest and greatest demand that a portion of the Irish people is making on the British Parliament. In relation to this question I desire to lay down several distinct propositions, which, however startling some of them may appear, are all I think capable of the clearest demonstration. The first is that the present inhabitants of Ireland are not in a position to claim separate government, as a distinct and homogeneous nation The Celtic race, it is true, predominates in Ireland, but they do not in any true sense constitute the people of Ireland They are not entitled to speak politically for the country or to demand to be made the sole depositaries of political power Not in one quarter alone of Ireland, but throughout, its length and breadth, the Saxon race have, for centuries, largely shared page 21 the country with their Celtic fellow citizens. The enormous proportion of the soil is in Saxon hands. The wealth of Ireland is mainly in the possession of men who are of English descent or at least wholly imbued with English sympathies. I do not mean to be in the least offensive when I add that education and intelligence are to be found more largely cultivated amongst the minority that holds by English traditions than in the majority that rejects them. It is calculated, in regard to numbers, that out of the five million inhabitants of Ireland from one and a half million to two millions are avowedly on the side of English rule, and would regard its abrogation as the direst calamity that could befall their country. Protestant Ulster is more sharply cut off by race, religion, and political creed from the Catholic Provinces of Ireland than Ireland herself is divided from the two kingdoms to which she is politically attached. And all this being true, with what reason can it be asserted that it is Ireland as a nation that is demanding virtually to be freed from Imperial rule, and to have her destinies handed over to a Parliament that would be practically independent? I am arguing this point on the supposition that the majority—even the large amjority—of the Irish people are in favour of Home Rule and I contend that, granting this to be the case, yet the demand for Home Rule cannot be accepted as that of a nation; cannot be accepted as the appeal, let us say, of Scotland, might be accepted—a united and homogeneous people,

But I advance a step further and reach a second proposition which may appear strange to many, and it is this—that there ft never yet been forthcoming authentic proof that a majority, at any rate a large majority, of the Irish people are in favour of Home Rule; in favour of it, that is to say, on the true merits of the question and apart from other issues with which it has been mixed up. In the first place, the voice of the electors of Ireland on the question has never been really heard. How could it be heard in the face of the terrorism of the League, which dominated the polling booths and made it more than men's lives were worth to register a vote in opposition the popular cry? At the election of 1886—unfortunotely I have not the figures—but out of the registered voters of Ireland a very large proportion failed to record their votes on either side. Why was it so? It was not through indiffer- page 22 ence, for the issues had taken fast hold of the popular mind and were felt to be the most momentous that the constituencies had ever been called on to determine. It was simply through this—that freedom of election had been crushed out by the tyranny of the popular leaders and the National League. The free voice of Ireland on this great question was not permitted to be heard. Mr Gladstone and Mr Parnell may boast of the 86 Irish members that were sent up to the House of Commies pledged to demand Home Rule for Ireland, but it is not as honest boast. No one knows better than those leaders then these 86 men were not the free, spontaneous choice of the Irish people. They were the nominees of Mr Parnell and this subordinates, whose word of command made them what they became; and it is idle to speak of them as representing anything but the will of the League. Not until the power of that great engine has been broken; not until votes can be cast without danger to life or worldly interest will it be possible to say what is really the mind of Ireland in regard to the question of Home Rule. I shall have to speak by and by further of the National League and the secret of its power over the minds of the agricultural population of Ireland. What I wish to emphasise at present is the fact that owing to the League's operation the return of 86 Home Rule members to the British Parliament, however imposing it may seem, deprived of true moral, if not of political, weight.

In most arguments on this question it is customary to assume as proved the two positions that I have endeavoured, I hope successfully, to assail. It is assumed that Ireland is entitled to speak as a nation on the question of being governed by a separate Parliament and a separate Executive; and she has spoken in unmistakable terms in favour of her being so governed. I have ventured to deny both propositions but I go on to this—that even if the truth of both were granted, it would not follow that the form of self-government demanded for Ireland and that Mr Gladstone proposed to fer on her by his Bill of 1885—and still less that any larger measure—ought to be conceded by the British Parliament It is one of the grand fallacies of the Home Rule agitators to speak of Ireland as if she stood alone in this matter, with in tresses that could be separated from all other interests; to speak as if the mere will of the Irish people, or the majority of them, page 23 should be conclusive as to the kind of government that Ireland ought to possess. Such a notion is plainly untenable in view of the facts of the case. Ireland does not stand alone, and her interests are not separable from the interests of the two kingdoms with which she stands politically connected. The Ireland of to-day is simply a portion, an integral and inseparable portion, of the United Kindom to which England and Scotland, also as integral portions, belong. And to ask that Ireland should be governed without a primary and dominating reference to the interests of the whole Empire is to make a demand that nothing in her political position can be found to justify. Sir, this is not purely an Irish question. It is not mainly an Irish question. It is a question that must be decided by what is necessary and politic for the great kingdom of which Ireland is a member. There can be no right to self-government belonging to Ireland; there can be no right to self-government belonging to Scotland; nor to Wales; nor to England, that would be inconsistent with the safety and the walfare of all these countries combined. The right, say of Scotland or of Ireland to manage her own affairs, in so far as these are directly or indirectly Imperial; that is to say in so far as they touch the safety of the State or the interests that the State is charged to protect, is a right that has no existence except in the imagination of enthusiasts incapable of discerning what the union of these countries with one another and with a third kingdom implies, In judging therefore of the defend for Irish Home Rule, the one question for consideration is this—how much of self-government can be given to Ireland with security to Imperial interests and to those interests of the whole Irish people that, in the nature of the case, are safe only in Imperial hands.

Of course my whole argument depends on the fact of the Union between Great Britain and Ireland, consummated in the first year of this century. And I know it is customary for Home Rulers, including their last acquired leader, Mr Gladstone, to treat that Union as if it lacked the force of moral, and therefore political, obligation. It is alleged that the Union of 1801 was brought about by corrupt and dishonourable means, and that therefore the right lies with Ireland to repudiate and annul it. Now, Sir, I wish to say, in a single word, in reply to these allegations, that an enquiry page 24 into the history of the Union, however it may concern the character of the two contracting parties and the reputation of statesmen who lived some ninety years ago, is not an enquiry that has the slightest practical bearing on the question of Home Rule to-day. In connection with this question I would no more consent to discuss as a factor in practical politics, the statecraft that accomplished the Union than I would consent to discuss the invasion of William The Conqueror as affecting modern titles to the soil of England; or the question of the Hanoverian succession as determining our allegiance to the Queen. There are certain great historical transactions that once accomplished, are accomplished for ever, and one of these, assuredly, is the Union of Ireland with Great Britain For nearly 90 years the whole course of Irish history has run alongside of the fact that Ireland had become a portion of the United Kingdom. Her whole social fabric, citizenship within her borders, the permanent transfer to her of capital form without, have all been determined by the knowledge that she was integrally and indissolubly a portion of the British Dominion. The families from Britain that have made Ireland their home, the millions of English and Scottish capital that have been invested in the soil, in other real property, and in every branch of Irish commerce—these migrations and these investments have all been made on the faith that the protection of the British Government would never be withdrawn from Ireland. By the events that have thus occurred since the Union the Imperial Government has become the only possible depositary of power, and the relegation of that power to other hands would be a betrayal of trust that no consideration whether political or sentimental could be held to justify. A robust view of the true position of Ireland—divided between races that are almost hostile, torn by faction and rent by religious difference—will dismiss with a kind of impatience the idea of Imperial rule being exchanged for the domination of a party, at the mere bidding of sentiment and to satisfy the hot headed aspirations of mistaken patriotism.

I come now to the question—What is Home Rule—the Home Rule that is demanded by the Irish party for Ireland! The bill of Mr Gladstone is dead, and no new scheme has been formulated either by that leader or by his coadjutor, Mr Parnell. No doubt Mr Gladstone is puzzled; at any rate me page 25 attempt has succeeded in drawing from him an avowal of his present purpose. We cannot go wrong in assuming two things—that the Home Rule measure of the future must be such a measure as will satisfy Mr Parnell and his Irish associates—while they in turn must submit to be dominated by the party that stands behind the Home Rule movement and that supplies the money by which mainly that movement is carried on. That there is such a party all the world knows. It has its head quarters on the other side of the Atlantic. Its leaders are refugees from English justice—men stained with crime—desperate in their methods of political warfare—the advocates, the open advocates of assassination and dynamite—men a portion of whose social orgies is the glorification of those who have taken part in murders upon Irish soil. When the Headers of the Home Rule movement go to America, these are the men whose hands they grasp, whose patronage they endure and whose money they receive. Implacable hostility to British rule is the leading principle of these conspirators and of the societies to which they belong. They are avowedly impatient of the slow methods to which the necessities of their new alliance with Mr Gladstone confine the advocates of Home Rule in England. When Mr Parnell speaks to his American supporters he takes up their own parable and tells them that "he never will be satisfied until the last link that "binds Ireland to England has been severed." Now, when such men are the virtual masters of the Irish Home Rulers and the National League; when they contribute the funds that are necessary for the League's existence and necessary even for the return of the League's creatures to Parliament—can it be doubted that the policy of the Irish Home Rulers must be, secretly at least, such a policy as will satisfy these American paymasters and allies? It may take at first the shape of Mr Gladstone's cautious and guarded bill of 1885, and may profess unswerving faithfulness to the British connection and loyalty to the British Crown; but if it is not to be a policy involving falseness to other masters, it will have separation and treason in its issues and at its core. The existence of an Irish Parliament and an Irish Executive, however fenced round with covenants and guarantees, could mean nothing but ultimate struggle for complete and absolute independence. "We can assign no limit," says Mr Parnell in one of his can- page 26 did moments, "to the aspirations of a nation," which, translated into plain English, signifies that whatever professions may be made of the finality of any measure that embodies a continuance of the Union, the foothold of an Irish Legislature might any day be used for an advance to complete severance from the British Crown. And this is the reason, the substantial and wholly adequate reason, why the two great parties into which Britain is at present divided pass under the appellations, respectively of Separatists and Unionists. The latter, the Unionists, are sometimes twitted with the pusillanimity of supposing that Ireland could ever succeed in casting off her allegiance to Britain, with Britain's enormous warlike resources both at sea and on land. But what is this but to say that the desired condition of Home Rule for Ireland is to rest ultimately on a basis of coercion? What is it but to say that we are to trust, for the maintenance of the new Constitution, to those same weapons of physical force the employment of which, in extreme circumstances, has called forth the indictment denunciation of these very patriots. Sir, disguise it as we may, this is in very truth a question of maintaining the integrity of the Union between Great Britain and Ireland and if we are unprepared to see that Union dissolved, we shall resist the first step towards its dissolution, the establishment of a semi-independent Parliament sitting in Dublin,

It would lead me far beyond my limits of time to show with any fulness of argument, that to sever the British and Irish Union would mean danger to the one country and disaster and ruin to the other. The geographical position of the two island will always, so long as Britain holds her position in the world, forbid the idea of separation. She could never consent to have a possibly hostile country or one capable of being made the base of operations against her by a hostile power—she could never consent to have such a country so near to her as Ireland has been placed by nature. The two nations were meant to belong to one another—to be a mutual stay and defence in war, and the support and complement of each other in peace What would Ireland be if the credit, the capital, and the commerce of England were withdrawn from her? And what might she not become if, by the cessation of this fruitless and weary strife of demagogues, she were left in peace to develop the marvellous resources with which Providence has endowed page 27 her. It needs only the absolute safety of life and property to induce such a How into Ireland of money and commercial energy and activity as would make her one of the most prosperous countries under the sun. And the heart grows sick to see the barrenness, the desolation, and the poverty to which she is consigned, simply because law has been abrogated, industry has been strangled, and the minds of the people deluded fertile hope of a fanciful and chimerical emancipation.

But apart from the exigencies of her relation to Great Britain, there is enough in the circumstances of Ireland herself to forbid the idea of her having one independent government. Those who have studied the matter most deeply tell us that to institute a Parliament in Dublin would be to light up in the country the flames of civil war. Ulster will never submit to be governed from Dublin, and the great portion of the population throughout the island that is bound to English interests and leans on English protection will never consent to hold its fortunes at the disposal of an Irish Parliament or trust the power of an Irish Executive. And when we consider what these people are and what claims they possess on the State of which they and their forefathers have been for nearly a century the loyal citizens, it will be seen that Britain could not desert them without the most cowardly betrayal of their rights and interests. These subjects of the Crown dread separation, and will fight to prevent it. And can we blame them? What do they see as an indication of the temper and designs of those who seek to be their masters? They see the men who would undoubtedly be in the lead of affairs in the new order themselves outraging law, oppressing those who resist them, forbidding free dealing between man and man, instigating to the repudiation of just debts, threatening reprisal on judges and police when the power they covet shall come into their hands. Are these the dispositions fitted to inspire confidence in the minds of a minority that is asked practically to give up the protection of the British Crown? Mr Gladstone knew that he could not trust in the hands of an Irish Parliament the property of the Irish landlords, and before giving effect to his scheme of change proposed to take over, virtually on behalf of the British nation, the land of every Irish holder that might accept of his terms of purchase. He admitted even, in such ambiguous phraseology as he loves to use, the page 28 right of Ulster to consideration of her claim to separate government when the day of Home Rule should come. But Ulster will never, it is certain, get self-government from a party that relies upon Mr Parnell and his associates. These see too clearly that the revenues of that rich province cannot be dispensed with if the new Irish Treasury is to be filled, and they will insist on a common lot and a common purse for those that love and those that would detest their rule. Mystery hangs over the designs of Mr Gladstone and his allies—the fresh designs that they cherish since the collapse of the notable scheme of 1885; but it may, I think, be taken certain that those designs do not include that exceptional treatment of the Province of Ulster that would make Home Rule a possibility and eliminate from its consequences the almost certainty of civil war.

I trust, Mr Chairman, there is yet time for me to say a word on some of the features of this great question—the question of the day undoubtedly for Ireland and the Empire What is really this demand for Home Rule in Ireland that has shaken the three kingdoms to their centre? Is it truly the demand of a people or a large section of a people eagerly desirous of political change and panting for a liberty that as denied them by the Government under which at present they live? I venture to think not. If I have spoken to any propose, I have shown that for the honest citizen in Ireland then is all the freedom that the heart of man can desire. I finally believe, Sir, that amongst the peasantry of Ireland, who are the bulk of the people, there is in truth no intelligent and ardent desire for a change in their political condition. What ever longing for Home Rule they may entertain has to be traced, I fear, to a more ignoble source. The Irish difficulties is at the root an agrarian and not a political one. And the manipulators of Home Rule have cunningly worked on the agrarian troubles and agrarian desires of the people. The tillers of the soil were brought to be enamoured of Home Rule, not for the political blessings it would confer, but because it was supposed to carry in its folds an object must nearer to their hearts. Home Rule in the breast of the Irish peasant means simply this—the instrument by which the last that he holds from another may be made, without payment his own. And herein lies the secret of the failure of all those page 29 generous remedial measures that were passed by Parliament for the Irish tenant's relief. He was schooled by demagogues to believe that he would be a fool to accept at the hands of the law any ameliorated tenure, when there would be shortly within his grasp, if only he obeyed his leaders, the land itself, without the plague of landlordism or the inconvenient obligation of rent. It is not to the credit of the Irish cultivator, but I am afraid it is in melancholy consistency with the human nature that moved him, that this dazzling prospect should make him an ardent Home Ruler; that it should blast the hopes of the Irish land reformers, and should launch the Irish landlords into a sea of troubles. Rents, as we all know, have been refused; evictions have been forced on men whose only crime was an effort at self-preservation and self-defence; and Irish politics have been mixed and confounded until real issues and the real motives of demagogues have slipped out of sight. I believe that when the Irish peasant sees, as his eyes are being now opened to see, that the law is stronger than his leaders and that his hope of filching the landlord's property is vain, the back of Home Rule will be broken, and Mr Pamell's occupation gone.

Indeed but for one disastrous and lamentable feature in this agitation it is tolerably certain that before this time the question of Home Rule would have lost its vitality and would have ceased seriously to disturb the atmosphere of British or Irish life. It was the marvellous transformation of Mr Gladstone into a Home Ruler that in 1885 brought that question within range of the practical politics of the day. It would furnish ample material for a separate lecture to discuss the wonderful performance of the great Whig leader, a performance known in English as a "wheel-about," and in pench by the military phrase, volte-face. Hut the genesis of so extraordinary a change in political view and action is worth the rapid tracing, especially as it is easily traceable, and will clear our apprehension of the great political divisions that Home Rule has created, and of the probable fortunes of the Before the general election of 1885, and in the middle of the electoral campaign, Mr Gladstone in plain terms implored the constituencies to give him such a majority in the now Parliament as would make him independent of Mr Parnell. The electors did not obey this behest, but placed him page 30 in such a majority only as made Mr Parnell, with his 86 flolowers, master of the situation and able to turn the scale in favour of either Tories or Liberals. That, Sir, is the true secret of Mr Gladstone's conversion to Home Rule. We know that his own Government had dealt in the most stringent manner with the leaders of that movement; that he had imprisoned under a rigorous Crimes Act Mr Parnell and his associates; that he had described in that epigrammatic language of which he is a master and with all the force of his rhetoric, the iniquity of the Land League, "whose steps declared, "were dogged by crime;" that he had denounced boycotting as having behind it the sanction of murder as its ultimate force; that he had characterised the doctrines of Mr. Parnell as the doctrines of "public plunder," and contrasted what he called that gentleman's immoral and degrading doctrines with the opinions of the great O'Connell. This Sir, was the Mr Gladstone of 1881 and up to the close of the elections of 1885, when the exigencies of the Liberal party demanded support from without. Mr Gladstone became a aware at this crisis in the history of his party that Lord Carnarrow had been in conference with Mr Parnell, and was supposed the have become a convert to Home Rule views; and the Whine leader rushed to the conclusion that the views of Lord Carnarvon were the views also of Lord Salisbury and his Cabinet and that another plot was in hand to "dish the Whigs." Then it was, Sir, that Mr Gladstone asked his party to believe—asked the people of England to believe—that for 15 year be had been cherishing Home Rule in his heart, and announced that he was now prepared to offer that gift to Ireland. The position thus assumed is probably the most extraordinary that was ever occupied by an English statesman. Those whose faith in Mr Gladstone will bear the strain of ascribing his change of front to patriotism and not to a desire to grasp at power and secure the interests of his party are of course welcome to their belief and to any comfort that their constancy brings them. But I believe that history will write another verdict, and will proclaim that in an evil hour, prompted by a motive beneath that of a patriot, the great Liberal Chief succumbed to temptation, resolved at all hazards to snatch as power, and to build up the tottering fortunes of his party, as the risk even of the integrity of the Empire. The step was a page 31 bold, not to say a rash and audacious one. It was taken without consultation with the leading men of the Liberal following-on his own sole responsibility and in the confidence that wherever he led, there, in the end, his obsequious comrades were bound to follow. But he had reckoned without his hosts. He had miscalculated the strength of political and moral fibre of men like Hartington and Chamberlain, like Bright and Goschen, like James, Selborne and Argyll, and a host of others of lesser name and note. The first result of the conception and submission to Mr Gladstone's Cabinet of the Home Rule and Land Purchase Bills was the resignations of Mr Chamberlain and Mr Trevelyan. The last was the shattering of the great Liberal party; Mr Gladstone retaining in allegiance to himself no men of mark but Mr Morley, Sir Vernon Harcourt, and the Earl of Rosebery. Nemesis had been swift and unrelenting; and the immoral blunder that was to have made the fortune of the Whigs ended in their sudden and disastrous overthrow. Beaten on his Home Rule Bill, Mr Gladstone appealed to the country, and the country, in so largo numbers, returned Unionist members to the House, that the Government fell into Lord Salisbury's hands. Then was formed, on the basis solely of the integrity of the Union, the famous coalition between the Conservative party and the Liberals that had rejected the dictation of Mr Gladstone—a coalition that has ruled, since it was constituted, the destinies of the country. And it ought not be possible to refer to that remarkable event without experiencing a thrill of gratitude to those men in the Liberal ranks who made so noble a sacrifice of party to patriotism—men who were willing for the sake of the country to sever unhesitatingly the ties of political friendship; to place themselves in antagonism to a Chief they had venerated; and to sake shipwreck for the time of their political hopes and aspirations. What that famous group of patriots did in the crisis of 1886 is, I believe, unique in English Parliamentary history and will form a bright page in the somewhat shady records of party. To their high character, to their extraordinary ability, and to their faithfulness to their new allies is due the safety up to this time of the Union, and the prospect of that safety being assured in the future.

Having glanced at the position of the Unionist Liberals, the page 32 temptation is almost irresistible to go a little into episode, and look for a moment at the place occupied by Mr Gladstone—especially with reference to his antecedents—and the remains of the Whig party that still adhere to him. Mr Gladstone is a psychological curiosity that it would be presumptuous in me to attempt to analyse. There are many of his countrymen in all parts of the world, that still cleave to and worship his But there is a large and increasing number who think that by his latest move in politics a great reputation has been tarnished, a great name overshadowed, and a great career virtually brought to a close. His latest tergiversation—the crowing one among a host of others that have marked his course in politics during the past sixty years—has provoked a stringes enquiry into the real claims that he can make to statesmanship, an enquiry that has issued in some very startling results. I will not take it upon me to deal with so great a name, but I will ask as many now hearing me as may desire to form a due estimate of the most noteworthy of our living statesman, to peruse a little book entitled "Mr Gladstone, a Study," by Mr. Louis Jennings, the member for Stockport. If the faith of any of Mr Gladstone's admirers can survive an attentive consideration of the facts which that little volume reveals, I can only say it must be of a heroic character indeed, and faith in which enthusiasm supplies to a large extent the place of reason. Mr Jennings contemplates and dissects the charter of Mr Gladstone in every phase under which during a long career it has exhibited itself. He reviews Mr Gladstone policy and administration in every department of the State with which he has intermeddled; and leads his reader, by a sheer historical record of facts, for which in every case authority is given, to this conclusion—that the great idol of the Liberal party has been in practice everywhere a failure, and it aim nothing but a brilliant opportunist. His admirers will doubt point to the eloquence of Mr Gladstone and to his mash fold genius and acquirements; but these are not in dispute The question is about his success as a statesman; and if the conclusions at which his critic has arrived be true, then the eloquence of Mr Gladstone has been a fatal gift for England In reviewing the Home Rule question we are closely concurred with what Mr Gladstone has done, and with the claim that past gives him to lead England forward to the most moses- page 33 tous constitutional change that has been contemplated during the century. The political trustworthiness of their leader is really the entire plea that the non-Unionist Liberals were able to advance when, at the word of command, they declared for an Irish Parliament; and if that plea can be shown to be futile, the prop on which Home Rule has been resting since 1885 must conspicuously fail. But I must leave Mr Gladstone in Mr Jennings' hands. The book I have recommended is accessible here. It is brilliantly written, and will be acknowledged at least to deal fairly and candidly with the subject of which it treats.

I have not time to discuss now the minor lights by which Mr Gladstone is surrounded. They shine, most of them, with no striking, and some, certainly, with no wholesome lustre. Neither can I, after having so long taxed your patience, venture on an estimate of Mr Parnell and his Irish host. That he himself is a man of great capacity, unflinching resolution, and of striking powers of debate will be acknowledged by every one. And it will be equally admitted that among those whom we may call his lieutenants in command are to be found men of singular eloquence and of remarkable real and courage, whatever may be thought of the cause in which they are engaged. They occupy a strange position in the British Parliament, which, however, through the strength and firmness of the Unionist coalition, they have long ceased to dominate or throw into effectual confusion.

The great interest now of course centres in the prospect for Home Rule on the one hand and the Unionist cause on the other. Recently the question as between them has entered a new phase, owing to various developments, some of them of quite a startling kind. In the first place there can be no doubt that the stringent measures of the Government have been largely effectual in checking the domination of the League and restoring order in the districts where its influence was at one time supreme. Again, there has been the remarkable Rescript of Pope Leo, to which I have already referred, condemning as immoral and forbidding to all true Catholics the use of the two great weapons of the Home Rulers—Boycotting and the Plan of Campaign. It would not be easy to overestimate either the moral or political value of this deliverance by the Head of the Roman Catholic Church. Certainly it super- page 34 sedes the necessity of demonstrating to our Roman Catholic brethren, what might be demonstrated on independent grounds that these cherished instruments of the League are then instruments of social tyranny and of fraud. And even for these beyond the pale of the Church of Rome, the decision of the Supreme Pontiff and his Bench of Cardinals—men representing the intelligence and moral sense of every country in Europe—can hardly fail to carry the greatest ethical weight Let the agitators struggle as they may to deprive the verdict of that tribunal of its significance and of its binding force on the consciences of Roman Catholics, it is impossible that it should not prove a most damaging blow to the Home Rule organisation in Ireland.

It would be an error to overlook, in the estimate I am attempting, the critical position that Mr Parnell occupies at this moment in the eyes of the people of the three kingdoms Clearly it would be indecent to offer an opinion on what will be the result of the judicial enquiry that is now being prosecuted into matters affecting the character of the National leader; but on that result will undoubtedly depend what is to be the immediate future of the Home Rule cause. In the meantime the friends of Union and the friends of order have nothing to fear. The Unionist phalanx is strong and unbroken. The Unionist majority in the House of Commons forbids the possibility of triumph to Mr Gladstone, backed though he is by the Irish contingent into whose arms he has thrown himself with the diminished forces of his party. The most powerful portion of the British Press is true to the integrity of the Empire. The English mind is being instructed from time to time by a series of addresses of singular weight and eloquence our the merits of the great question at issue. The conviction remains strong that at all hazards the Union of the three kingdoms must be maintained if the British Empire is to continue unimpaired in honour, in dignity, and in strength. It is a simple question of how far British courage will continue proof against the counsels of cowardice, of surrender and despair. We may trust our countrymen for the result. They will be just to Ireland. They will grant to her when the time comes whatever of self-government she can claim in common with the two nations that stand with her on equal terms in relation to the great Empire of which each is an undivided part page 35 But neither to passion nor to sentiment, neither to violence nor to intrigue, will ever be yielded up that Imperial Unity Which is at once the glory and the safety of the British State.