Sir Henry James, addressing his constituents at Bury on Wednesday,
pressed home two points with great force. The first was the degrading effect on the House of Commons pro- duced by the Irish Party of eighty, which, without taking any personal interest in Bills for Great Britain, votes for all Mr. Gladstone's proposals, merely by way of paying the needful equivalent for Irish Home-rule. He showed, by the speeches of the Irish leaders, that they are staving off an appeal to the country on Home-rule expressly because they believe that the result of such an appeal would be disastrous until sufficient British measures have been passed to take the bad taste of the Irish measure out of the mouths of the English constituencies. And in the meantime, they support one rneasure after another of the Gladstonian. Government without regard to its merits, and simply with the view of gaining over British constituencies to Mr. Gladstone's aide. Again, Sir Henry James showed that formerly Mr. Gladstone had stood up firmly for the constitutional right of the House of Lords to reject a measure sent up by the Corn-
mons, if after showing, as they have repeatedly shown, their strong wish to defer to a popular demand clearly made, they arelhonestly opposed to any one such measure, and honestly doubtful whether the people of the United Kingdom cordially desire it. Yet this is the very situation in which Mr. Gladstone now passionately condemns the House of Lords for insisting that the people shall reconsider the position on Irish Home-rule
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