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As it has lately been attempted to blacken the character of the Irish leaders, it deserves to be remarked that whatever has been charged against them was said or done by them before the spring of 1885, and was, practically, perfectly well known to the Tory leaders when they accepted the alliance of the Irish party in the House of Commons, and courted their support in the election of 1885. To those who remember what went on in the House in the sessions of 1884 and 1885, the horror now professed by the Tory leaders for the conduct and words of the Irish party would be matter for laughter if it were not also matter for just indignation.

Why, it may be asked, if the persuasion that Home Rule was certain, and even desirable, had become general among the Liberals who had sat through the Parliament of 1880, was it not more fully expressed at the election of 1885? This is a fair question, which I shall try to answer.

In the first place, the electors made few inquiries about Ireland. They disliked the subject; they had not realized its supreme importance. Those of us who felt anxious to explain our views (as was my own case) had to volunteer to do so, for we were not asked about them. The Irish party in the constituencies was in violent opposition to Liberal candidates; it did not interrogate, but denounced. Further, it was felt that the issue was mainly one to be decided in Ireland itself. The question of Home Rule was being submitted, not, as heretofore, to a limited constituency, but to the whole Irish people. Till their will had been constitutionally declared at the polls it was not proper that Englishmen or Scotchmen should anticipate its tenour. We should even have been accused, had we volunteered our opinions, of seeking to affect the result in Ireland, and, not only of playing for the Irish vote in Great Britain, as we saw the Tories doing, but of prejudicing the chances of those Liberal candidates who, in Irish constituencies, were competing with extreme Nationalists. A third reason was that most English and Scotch Liberals did not know how far their own dispositions towards Home Rule were shared by their leaders. Mr. Gladstone’s declaration in his Midlothian address was no doubt a decided intimation of his views, and was certainly understood by some (as by myself) to imply the grant to Ireland of a Parliament; but, strong as its words were, its importance does not seem to have been fully appreciated at the moment. And the opinions of a statesman whose unequalled Irish experience and elevated character gave him a weight only second to that of Mr. Gladstone–I mean Lord Spencer–had not been made known. We had consequently no certainty that there were leaders prepared to give prompt effect to the views we entertained. Lastly, we were not prepared with a practical scheme of self-government for Ireland. The Nationalist members had propounded none which we could either adopt or criticize. Convinced as we were that Home Rule would come and must come, we felt the difficulties surrounding every suggestion that had yet been made, and had not hammered out any plan which we could lay before the electors as approved by Liberal opinion.[5] We were forced to confine ourselves to generalities.

Whether it would have been better for us to have done our thinking and scheme-making in public, and thereby have sooner forced the details of the problem upon the attention of the country, need not now be inquired. Any one can now see that something was lost by the omission. But those who censure a course that has actually been taken usually fail to estimate the evils that would have followed from the taking of the opposite course. Such evils might in this instance have been as great as those we have encountered.

I have spoken of the importance we attached to the decision of Ireland itself, and of the attitude of expectancy which, while that decision was uncertain, Englishmen were forced to maintain. We had not long to wait. Early in December it was known that five-sixths of the members returned from Ireland were Nationalists, and that the majorities which had returned them were crushing. If ever a people spoke its will, the Irish people spoke theirs at the election of 1885. The last link in the chain of conviction, which events had been forging since 1880, was now supplied. In passing the Franchise Bill of 1884, we had asked Ireland to declare her mind. She had now answered. If the question was not a mockery, and representative government a sham, we were bound to accept the answer, subject only, but subject always, to the interests of the whole United Kingdom. In other words, we were bound to devise such a scheme of self-government for Ireland as would give full satisfaction to her wishes, while maintaining the ultimate supremacy of the Imperial Parliament and the unity of the British Empire.