On Wednesday, Mr. Chamberlain made another speech at a house
dinner of the Glasgow Liberal Club, which, acting in a larger spirit than the National Liberal Club in London, has not yet made the Club too hot to hold the Liberal Unionists by turn- ing discussions on such neutral subjects as the emancipation of the land, into mere opportunities for reviling the Unionists. But, of course, Mr. Chamberlain could not enter on topics on which the two sections of the party are at issue, and he dwelt chiefly on social subjects, amongst which he treated the raising up of a class of peasant-proprietors both in England and Ireland as one of the most important. Especially he told his audience that at the Round Table Conference, the two parties, though differing rather widely on the subject of Irish local government, had come into very close accord on the subject of a great agrarian measure for Ireland, a measure of Irish Land-purchase; and he declared that, so far as he was concerned, he was quite willing to have the results of the Conference published, and even challenged their publication, as he did not see why an Irish land measure should not be carried by the Government with the consent of the Gladstonians, without in any way involving the question of Home-rule. To this suggestion Mr. Morley, in his short speech at Portsmouth on Thursday, hardly assented. At least, he declared that the Round Table discussions on local government were much the more important of the two. Mr. Chamberlain understands, of course, the attitude of the Gladstonians on this matter far better than we can do ; but Mr. Gladstone has undoubtedly declared, and has declared more than once, that he saw no means of securing Great Britain against loss by any feasible plan of Land-purchase without the preliminary creation of an Irish Legislature which should assume a primary responsibility for the scheme. We do not believe that the Gladstonians will ever willingly allow the agrarian difficulty to be removed till they have administered their political nostrum for Ireland's malady.
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