In Monday's speech Mr. Gladstone pursued the same theme. He
insisted that Ireland had forced herself again upon Parlia- ment, just as an obstruction on a line of railway forces the removal of that obstruction on the railway authorities as their first duty. The train comes to a standstill. The passengers are thrusting their heads out at every window, and asking, 'Why do you stop the train 10 Just so the Parnellites stopped the Parliamentary train, and made it necessary to remove the obstraction. The only answer to Mr. Gladstone is that this never happened. In this Parliament at least, it was he who anticipated the obstruction, and not the passengers who cried out because it had occurred. Nor is there anything to show that if he had -required Mr. Parnell to formulate his demands, and get the Irish people to agree upon them and to prove the consistency of those demands with British safety, the obstruc- tion would as yet have taken place. As to the Land Bill, Mr. Gladstone declared that merely for disapproving the Land Bill no one need vote against the Government, as that was not the issue. But his language as to the withdrawal of the principle of the Land Bill was extremely guarded and diplomatic. He denied that he differed from the speech of the late Sir Robert Peel in 1834, and denied this on the ground that in 1834 the Union had had no fair trial, and could not have been said to have then failed ; and, further, on the ground that Sir Robert was speak- ing of a dissolution of the Union, and that what he (Mr. Glad- stone) has proposed is much better and safer than a dissolution of the Union. Then he went on to appeal to Scotland in the name of Ireland to gratify the reasonable wishes of Ireland, seeing that Ireland had consented to the conditions laid down by English scruples and even "prejudices." We must say that Mr. Gladstone is not on very firm ground in insisting on this supposed Irish consent to his own proposed guarantees. Even the Irish Members would probably resist many of them in Committee. And that the Irish nation either has endorsed or will ever endorse the acceptance of all these conditions when they come to have them fully explained, we do not believe.
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