Mr. Gladstone spoke at Dalkeith this day week, and entered
there on the question of Home-rule for Scotland. He had never, he said, been "a worshipper of the Union between England and Scotland," but had " never, on the other hand, felt a precipitate or an eager desire to unsettle it." Whether eager or precipitate, or not, all he said had a steady drift in that direction. He descanted especially on the Scotch Local Government Bill, on which there were divisions where the numbers of Scotch Members who were in the minority, and therefore defeated, were 43, 48, 41, 40, 45, 52, and so forth, in every case more than a majority of the Scotch Members ; while the numbers of Scotch Members who voted in the majority and were successful, were 18, 12, 17, 12, 12, and 10. That suggested to him the remark that " our first duty is to struggle, even in this present ill-starred Parliament, against this continued trampling down of Scottish convictions,"—in other words, to struggle for localism more and more. Does Mr. Gladstone suppose that the same thing does not happen for England, and that an English majority is not constantly defeated on an English measure by the Scotch and Irish support of the English minority P Only, when it happens, no one ever thinks of making a grievance of it. Would Mr. Gladstone apply the same principle to smaller areas, and make it a great grievance that (say) Cornwall or Norfolk was defeated on a measure chiefly affecting Cornwall or Norfolk by the rest of England ? It seems to us that his mind is so preoccupied with local rights, that he does not even appreciate the importance of forgetting the province in the Kingdom.
