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needs; or squandering our

inheritance

as a

neighbouring nation has done to its impoverishment and sorrow. When such is the parting of the ways, it is not difficult to foresee what the action of individuals will be. Whatever eccentricities may be caused by the passions of the hour, the stronger men, those who are not dominated by abstractions, but who are ever in healthy touch with facts, will more and more draw together in support of development against revolution. The extremists, the men of few and narrow but strongly self-assertive ideas, will take their several ways. The old Tory, who thought the State coach was going best when it stood still, will retire to his acres. The last years of those who adhere to Gladstonism will be enlivened by domestic bickerings in the house of their friends.

In this heterogeneous political party the ethical idea has been turned topsy-turvy. It is inscribed on their banner that the strong shall yield to the weak; that the weak, through apotheosis, shall weaken the strong.

There is no English statesman of the present day who is more of a purist by profession than Mr Morley. When he fell foul of the Chief Secretary for saying that the political gulf which had at first

separated Unionists from Gladstonians was now deepened into a great moral gulf impossible to be bridged across, it is but scanty justice to the austere Saint Just to say that he rejoiced in his misery and shame, and, reversing the parable, invited Lazarus to quit his lofty sphere and share with him the experiences of the political Tartarus. Mr Morley has not lost his sense of moral apostleship. He is fully persuaded in his own mind that public virtue is safe in his keeping. Perhaps he has even a lurking belief that to him has been assigned the function of a political Messiah, to usher in an era of a new commandment which shall be the fulfilling of all that was best in the traditions of English statesmanship. In the light of his perfect purity the Chief Secretary was to him as a Pharisee presuming to censure the apostles and disciples of the true faith. It was with the proud scorn of insulted virtue that he invited the corruption of his political adversaries to be as honest in its vileness as he is in his purity, and show itself as he holds up his light to the gaze of the world. There is one respect in which Mr Morley pre-eminently, and all the faithful in their degree, are meekly conscious that they are not as other men are. They have kept the faith with poor Ireland. When she seeks for bread, they do not

offer her a stone. So perfectly immaculate has been the conduct throughout of the Separatists towards the Sister Isle that one cannot speak of it without falling into the use of scriptural language. Moreover, Mr Morley tells us that their faithfulness to Ireland is not a destroying of the law of the British Constitution, but a fulfilling of the same. You have given Ireland the political franchise, he argues. In doing so you have declared your intention to raise her from her former state, in which she was fain to pick up the crumbs that fell from Dublin Castle. You have professed to place her at last at the children's table, and feed her with the children's bread. And when she, in accordance with the law of the British family constitution, puts forth her hand to nourish herself as her nature dictates, you decline to give her the wheaten bread of a parliament in Dublin, and present to her teeth instead the stone of coercion. This is a formidable indictment when it is seen soaring in the lofty regions of Mr Morley's thought. Let us see if it retains its terrible character when it is brought nearer the realm of fact and truth.

What the Nationalists want, and what Mr Morley and his friends are quite prepared to surrender to them, is the severance of the legislative union. The rightness or the wrongness of doing so is represented

as being antecedent to all considerations of expediency; a position perhaps which it would be difficult to reconcile with Mr Morley's philosophical creed. As Mr Gladstone argued that the disestablishment of the Irish Church was simple justice, so do he and Mr Morley now contend that the granting of a parliament in Dublin is simple justice. I put aside for the moment all question as to how far the demand for a parliament in Dublin is a national demand. For the purposes of my argument it does not much matter whether Mr Parnell has at his back a larger or a smaller proportion of his countrymen. All that I require is a minority in Ireland, largely composed of the propertied, the cultured, and the leading commercial people, which is opposed to the severance of the legislative union. The kernel of Mr Morley's argument, as it is that of his chief, is, that from the axioms of the British Constitution, the granting of a parliament in Dublin, as demanded by a majority of the Irish nation, is a corollary from the extension of household franchise to Ireland. I am not inclined to deny to Mr Gladstone and his lieutenant an average measure of political insight and of political consistency. I take them at their word, that they were always of the same mind as to the justice of yielding to the national demand of Ireland. No

doubt, the case of Mr Gladstone's consistency is difficult to deal with. He seemed to have a different standard of just legislation for Ireland at the time when he pleaded earnestly for such a majority from England and Scotland as would enable him to mete out justice to Ireland, unmoved by either the flatteries or the frowns of Mr Parnell. If he is sincere now, he must have been Jesuitical then, and vice versa. I shall give him the benefit of the doubt, and allow his present sincerity. Before the passing of the Franchise Bill and the Bill for the Redistribution of Seats, Mr Gladstone and Mr Morley were both aware that if these Bills passed, Mr Parnell would secure a large increase to his following, and would use it at least to insist on severance of the legislative union; and they were quite prepared to honour Mr Parnell's cheque for a parliament in Dublin, when it should be endorsed in a constitutional way by the bulk of the Irish people.

Such being the inner thoughts of the two authors of Gladstonism during the period of its gestation, what was the conduct pursued by them and their friends in the debates on the Redistribution of Seats Bill? The curtain of the past has been drawn aside by one who never stooped to mean misrepresenta

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