14
to accept a settlement which does not and ought not to satisfy her, I would cheerfully make her a parting gift of the fifty millions which the landlords have spurned, to be expended on public works, as some compensation for the poverty in which English rule has sunk her. I believe our workmen would give it for such a purpose with an open heart, though they naturally grudge it to the landlords.
I cannot conclude these remarks without testifying my admiration for the sagacity and pluck which Mr. Gladstone has displayed in this crowning achievement of his career. I may call it so, though the immediate issue is still uncertain. For nothing can now undo the work of the last month, even should its author not live to witness its final success.
It has been a magnificent stand that the old general has made, let it end for the moment how it will. I must confess I did not think he had it in him. Superhuman efforts were made to impress the public with the idea that the proposal was a huge joke, that it was scouted by the whole nation, that Mr. Gladstone stood absolutely alone, that he was a lunatic or worse. Such a torrent of unscrupulous malignity has never burst on the head of any statesman in our time. The calculation was that the unparalleled violence of this concerted onslaught would prevent the Home Rule Bill from passing its first reading, that is to say, would inflict on Mr. Gladstone, not merely a defeat, but an insult; his influence would be shattered, and the prestige which long success had given him would be at an end.
Well, this desperate attempt to suppress the Bill before it had even been seen, and to drive its author from public life just as you would bundle a drunken man out of an orderly assembly, has failed. It was the only chance of neutralising the prodigious impulse given to Home Rule by his conversion, and it has failed. The Bill is before the country, and every day shows more clearly that the mass of the Liberal party is prepared to support it. But whether it passes in the present form or not is of quite
