Mr. Gladstone has written a letter to Mr. Watson, of
Roch- dale, declining to commit himself to any revised scheme for Irish Home-rule, on the ground that to do so would require him to part with his own liberty of judgment, while his critics would justly maintain theirs. We can well believe that this repre- sents his deepest conviction ; but we do not at all accept his view that the attempt to elicit his opinion, and that of his colleagues, on a point so all-important as the mode of subordinating the proposed Irish Legislature to the Central Legislature at West- minster, is in any sense a political trap laid for him and his ex-Ministerial friends. In fact, it involves the whole question whether he is prepared to create a separate Irish Legislature at any sacrifice, or only if it be found possible to create it without the complete sacrifice of all our historical antecedents,—that is, without the substitution of a federal Constitution for the historical Constitution of the Kingdom. No question can be conceived which it is more important to submit to the people than this. At present a general election which should give Mr. Gladstone a victory would not determine it. Nobody knows whether or not he wishes to go the length of federalism in order to open the way for a separate Irish Legislature, supposing that it cannot be created without going that length. And this is what the constituencies ought to know.
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