Lord Rosebery made no fewer than ten speeches—long and short—at
Liverpool on Friday and Saturday last, a feat more suggestive of an American Presidential candidate than a detached "Imperial votary," — if we may so paraphrase Shakespeare. In the first of these utterances—that delivered in the Philharmonic Hall on Friday—Lord Rosebery made a most important and satisfactory "personal avowal" in regard to Home-rule. Neither he nor the world had stood still in the five years that had elapsed since he was in public life, and none of the questions then looming large had been so remark- ably transformed as the Irish question. These changes were thus summarised by Lord Rosebery :—(1) Mr. Gladstone's Bills of 1886 and 1893 were, by universal acknowledgment, dead and buried. (2) The alliance between the Irish and the Liberal party had been dissolved,—to the interests of both parties. (3) The Irish question had been settled by the Government on a basis of county local government—the mode originally proposed by the Liberals—placing Ireland, as regards local government, on an equality with England, Scotland, and Wales, but with an adventitious superiority in Parliament due to her excessive representation. Lord Rose- bery then went on :—" The Irish leaders have at last played their full hand. They have demanded, not what Mr. Gladstone was willing to give them, but an independent Parliament in Dublin. Now when you get there, I say 'Halt!' I am not prepared at any time or under any circumstances to grant an independent Parliament in Dublin."
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