Europe are anxious for peace, but great waves of popular sentiment are sweeping over the nations, and no man knows what impulse they may give to the men whom they seem to obey, but whom they in reality govern."

Lord Salisbury then passed on to answer Sir W. Harcourt, and ended with a historic sketch of the relation of the two islands. He showed that from the beginning of the Tudor period Englishmen had found in every crisis a great danger in Ireland, and had met it by renewed attempts to bring that country more closely within their own political system. The same danger had arisen in Scotland the moment the absolute monarchy ceased, and the Revolution was followed by the Scottish Act of Union. That Act had succeeded; but circumstances had in that case been fortunate, for no Mr. Gladstone had risen to nourish and exaggerate all causes of political difference. The work of union had been accomplished there, as in France, and Italy, and Germany; and it would be accomplished in Ireland also if the constituencies, remembering their grand inheritance of empire, would but will "consolidation."

To this speech Mr. Gladstone found an opportunity of replying on the very eve of his seventy-ninth birthday. Leaving Hawarden for Italy, for the unification of which he had done so much in earlier life, he was received with the customary enthusiasm at the various places at which his train stopped, and at some uttered a few words of encouragement to his supporters. At Dover he arranged to make a regular address to the Kentish. Liberals, presided over by Mr. Philip Stanhope, an advanced Radical, but closely related to Lord Salisbury's Secretary for War. Mr. Gladstone seized the occasion of his connection with an old Whig family to pay a tribute to the Whig families of a hundred years ago, the Cavendishes and Fitzwilliams. He took credit for the support he had given to Lord Salisbury's foreign policy, and expressed the strongest conviction that, whatever might be the dangers threatening European peace, England ought to keep out of the embroilment. As to Free Trade, he feared that Liberals could not rely upon the Government, and he examined the acts, or words, of Mr. Goschen and Lord Hartington to show what little reason existed for expecting that they would support Free Trade. Mr. Bright would not support Protection, but in dealing with the question Liberals would have to rely upon the mass of the people. He thought that if the Government delayed the introduction of the Local Government Bill until after Easter, it would be an undisguised mockery. Mr. Gladstone then criticised in detail the action of the Government in Ireland. Remarking that the great disease of Ireland is the estrangement of the people from the law, he said: "Do you think that when the Irish people see the Lord Mayor of Dublin, a courteous, accomplished, estimable man, of whom I may speak from my own knowledge, sent to prison-do you think

it is possible that any thing can more tend to demoralise them and widen the breach that separates them from the law of the country? The whole power and voice of the people are on one side, and the other is from Dublin Castle backed by Lord Salisbury when he speaks at Derby, and it is the voice of Lord Salisbury coming to them as a foreign voice, telling them that English institutions and English consolidation are to be forced upon them whether they like it or not, and that all the principles of freedom on which our empire is founded are in their case to be set aside. He ought to reverse the opinion which prevails throughout all the British colonies and the Anglo-Saxon race, and to reverse the judgment of the civilised world with reference to the fact that England, great in power and bright in most of the recollections of her history, has one dark blot and stain which degrades her dealings with the sister island, which, instead of being as they ought to be an honour to the greatest of free countries, would be a dishonour to the most despotic and enslaved community."

Apart from all its other qualities, Mr. Gladstone's speech was a marvellous display of mental and physical vigour for a man whose years so nearly approached fourscore. But brilliant in its rhetoric, and incisive in its criticisms, it failed to bring conviction to followers who were not already of their leader's way of thinking. Nothing, perhaps, was at once more striking and more painful than the widening gulf which separated Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright; and there can be little doubt that the latter's plain, straightforward letters, which from time to time appeared, did more to make the surrender of the Radical Unionists impossible than all the speeches of the apologists of that group. We have seen how Sir George Trevelyan found the strain put upon him by his alliance with the Conservatives intolerable; and it is not difficult to suppose that his return to his quondam leader would have been followed by others of less note, but for the solid arguments and blunt common sense with which Mr. Bright's letters provided them. In one case, that of Mr. Buchanan, who represented the western division of Edinburgh, Sir George Trevelyan's example was contagious; but his return to the Gladstonians was balanced by the defection of Mr. Lacaita, one of the members for Dundee, who saw in the Liberal opposition a wanton obstruction of all public business, and refused to admit that the Crimes Act was aimed at offences because of their political origin, and that it was framed with the view of the suppression of the liberty of speech so long as that liberty was not made the cloak for subverting law and order. Mr. Buchanan

and Mr. Lacaita, finding themselves no longer in sympathy with the majorities by which they had been sent to Westminster, announced their intention of resigning their seats as soon as Parliament re-assembled-a decision qualified by some as quixotic, but by all as most honourable.

The close of the year was marked by the announcement in the Dublin Gazette that the Irish Land Commissioners, in the exercise of the powers conferred upon them by the Land Act of the previous session, had reduced all the judicial rents fixed since 1881, by sums varying from 6 to 20 per cent. The average was about 14 per cent. And consequently the reduction on the 114,647 judicial rents to which it applied, amounted to about 360,000l. per annum-a loss which in theory fell upon the landlords. But, inasmuch as in the majority of cases, they had already lost all hopes of getting their arrears in full, the "Conservative" treatment to which they were called upon to submit was perhaps less distasteful than it would otherwise have been. In so far, however, as such a reduction of arrears threw doubt upon the fixity of the actual rentals, the sale value of all Irish estates was seriously affected; and the beginning of an outery from the landlords against the Government was beginning to make itself heard as the year closed.

The domestic history of the Jubilee year, so far as politics were concerned, might be summed up in two words, "impotence and "unrest." The Opposition had shown itself strong enough and sufficiently united to render all general legislation hopeless; but it was powerless to prevent the passage of one or two measures, which it denounced as fatal to the peace of the Empire. The spirit of unrest, in spite of all official assurances to the contrary, wandered over Ireland as freely at the end as at the beginning of the year, and symptoms of its influence were to be traced in Scotland, Wales, and even in London itself. The Government had, it is true, successfully asserted its right to proclaim public meetings in both Tipperary and Trafalgar Square; but in neither countries had it obtained its end without stirring up bitter feelings and rousing angry passions. But if the Ministry were no weaker at the close than at the commencement of the year, the Opposition were no stronger. The four seats gained by the Gladstonians in the earlier part of the year had not been followed up by subsequent successes, and in the most recent elections they had been signally unfortunate. The Government, on the other hand, had managed to bring the year to a close without making that open admission of their weaknesses which would have been augured from a remodelling of the Cabinet. Over and over again it was positively announced by organs of the Opposition, that Lord Hartington would take the premiership and leadership of the House of Commons, with Lord Salisbury as Foreign Secretary for his colleague in the Upper House. But the year closed without any modification of the Ministry, even in its lowest offices; and hostile critics were reduced to admit that the collapse of the Conservative Government was delayed until they had formulated their programme for the coming session. Moreover, the menacing aspect of affairs on the Continent had some restraining influence on a large body of Liberals out

side the parliamentary followers of Mr. Gladstone. His unfortunate influence on our foreign policy at a critical juncture was not forgotten. It was felt by many, even of his warmest admirers, that at a moment when the slightest accident might set in motion the armed millions of Europe, the return to office of a statesman who would probably devote his attention to the settlement of the Irish question to the exclusion of every other, would be perilous in the extreme. The leaders of the Opposition even when more passionately arraigning the Government for its misdeeds, recognised this danger, and seemed, even in their most fervid demonstrations, to postpone the overthrow of Lord Salis. bury to some remote period, when the rivalries of continental Europe should have become somewhat less acute, and the grievances of Ireland should assert themselves in a fashion less compromising to those who made a platform of their sympathies with that sorely-tried country.

CHAPTER VI.

SCOTLAND AND IRELAND.

1. SCOTLAND.-Political Campaign.--Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Lacaita.-Disestablishment.-The Crofters. -Revival of Trade.

2. IRELAND.-The Plan of Campaign-The New Chief Secretary-The Riots at Mitchelstown-The Woodford Meeting-Imprisonment of the Lord Mayor of Dublin-Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Wilfrid Blunt-Visits of Unionist Leaders.

SCOTLAND.

THE political history of Scotland during the year had little to distinguish it from its neighbour. Its electors and non-electors, like those of England, were by turns confirmed, exhorted, and warned by the leaders of the three great parties of which Parliament was composed. Most of these meetings have already been alluded to in the general survey of the political situation; and the incidents of the Glasgow election, which proved Mr. Gladstone's hold upon the electorate of that great centre to be unbroken, have been narrated in a previous chapter. It may be mentioned, however, that the Gladstonian Liberals had been represented at various times and places by Mr. Campbell Bannerman, Sir Horace Davey, Mr. Childers, and Lord Rosebery, who placed before their hearers the alternative between coercion and conciliation as the means of governing Ireland. In this they were ably seconded by Mr. Michael Davitt, Mr. Dillon, Mr. John O'Connor and others, who pleaded the cause of Home Rule with an earnestness of conviction which awoke the sympathy of their hearers. The Liberal Unionists who numbered sixteen among the Scotch representatives found the lines which separated them from the Gladstonian Liberals growing deeper and wider, and

in two constituencies-Edinburgh (west) and Dundee—the respective members, Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Lacaita announced their intention of resigning the trust committed to them by their electors. Mr. Buchanan had been elected by the Unionist vote, and found his sympathies drawn towards the Gladstonian section, whilst Mr. Lacaita, elected by a thoroughly Gladstonian body, saw in the hindrances placed by the Opposition in the way of legislation, an organised attempt to obstruct the constitutional functions of Parliament.

With regard to the questions especially affecting Scotland small progress was made in forcing either Home Rule for Scotland or Disestablishment into a prominent position. Mr. John Morley emphatically condemned any attempt to bring the former question into the field of practical politics. The Disestablishment question was kept in the foreground chiefly by the agency of the clergy, and within their ranks the agitation was undoubtedly kept up in the usual spirit; but this feeling was scarcely, if at all, reflected by the lay public. In January it was announced that three associations for the promotion of disestablishment in Scotland the Scottish Council of the Liberation Society, the Scottish Disestablishment Association, and the Society for procuring Religious Equality in Scotland-had combined their action, and had been amalgamated in the Disestablishment Council for Scotland, and an elaborate statement was issued by the new body, insisting, with all the old vehemence, on the necessity for immediate disestablishment and disendowment; but the appeal met with no hearty response. In February the General Council of the Scottish Liberal Association, reconstituted after the withdrawal, or the expulsion, of the Unionist element, framed new rules and constructed a new platform, in which disestablishment found a place; but its place was simply one of recognition, not one requiring immediate action, and in point of fact no action has followed in that line. The General Assemblies met as usual in May, and although Principal Rainy was Moderator of the Free Church, the disestablishment question excited little interest, little hopefulness, and consequently little enthusiasm. Certain remarks made by Mr. Gladstone at Nottingham were interpreted, on the one hand, as holding out a promise of disestablishment in Scotland, and, on the other hand, as offering it as a bribe to his Home Rule followers in the North. The notion of a bribe was promptly repudiated; and the promise, if such it was, had very little effect on the ranks of the Radical Unionists. Nevertheless, the relations between the Established Church and the Free Church underwent certain modifications in the course of the year. The negotiations which had for some time been going on for co-operation, if not for union, were brought to a fruitless conclusion in February; whilst, on the other hand, the minority of the Free Church party, composed of those who were opposed to disestablishment, urged that their claims should be