Lord Salisbury delivered a very powerful speech in the South
of London, at the Surrey Theatre, on Monday. On one portion of it,—his comparison of the Irish representation to be left in the Imperial Parliament to the "pocket-boroughs" of the unreformed Parliament,—we have said enough in another column. He made use also of a very effective illustration of the danger of meddling with the very foundations of the Constitution, from the recent fatal collapse of a building in Washington as the consequence of shaking the foundations and digging under the walls. Mr. Gladstone, he says, is bringing upon us precisely similar dangers of a very much more far-reaching kind, from the tricks he is playing with the British Constitution. Then the finance of the proposed arrangement is all as perilous and uncertain as it can be, and it will raise up questions of taxation between us and Ireland just of the kind which led to the loss of our American Colonies more than a hundred years ago. The notion that self-interest would keep Ireland from quarrelling with us, is just like the notion that self-interest will keep every wife from irritating her husband, and every husband from breaking the head of his wife,—a result which is not according to ex- perience. And bow easy it would be for Ireland to assist the enemies of Great Britain in time of war, even without any open rupture, Lord Salisbury did not find it at all difficult to show. He dwelt eloquently on the greatness of the danger, and pointed out that a very little resolution and effort would put an end to " this crazy and ignominious dream of Home-rule" fur ever.
