In view of all the circumstances, we should most strongly
advise Unionists not to be deluded by the incident of Mr. J. A. Pease's speech, and the indignation it has created in Ireland, into imagining that the Liberal Government and Liberal Party are not pledged to give Home-rule. We believe them to be pledged (though, of course, whether they can or will keep their pledge is another matter) to Home-rule and to nothing less than Gladstonian Home-rule. No on( should be deceived by talk about the maintenance of tin supremacy of the Imperial Parliament.. It will be remembered that Mr. Gladstone always used this formula, and repeated it again and again at the Election of 1892, and when he intro. duced his Bill in Parliament. Yet, as a matter of fact, hit measure, in fact if not in name, reduced the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament to a phantom. The establishment of an Irish Parliament and an Irish Executive to deal with purely Irish affairs can mean nothing less than Colonial Home-rule. That this view is correct is immensely strengthened by the fact that when the Liberal Party tried, as they did two years ago, to establish a kind of glorified local government, it was rejected with " hatred, ridicule, and contempt" by the whole of the Irish Nationalists, and this in spite of the fact that Mr. Redmond had pledged himself to obtain its acceptance at the hands of his followers.
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