A very curious correspondence between Mr. Gladstone and the Duke
of Devonshire appeared in the Times of this day week. The Duke had quoted Mr. Gladstone's celebrated warning to the Liberal Party in 1885, that unless he could be given a majority which made him independent of the Irish Home-rulers, neither he nor the Liberal Party were to be trusted to settle the question. In reference to this quotation, Mr. Gladstone had instructed his private secretary to say that it was inaccurate ; whereupon the Duke quotes the words of the Edinburgh speech of November 9th, 1885, and asks where the inaccuracy is. The actual speech, indeed, is decidedly stronger in its emphasis, though not in its meaning and effect, than the Duke's account of it. Bat Mr. Gladstone will not admit that he himself had made a mistake, and that the Duke had been perfectly accurate. His plea is most astounding. He says that the Duke quoted what was said in relation to one com- bination of circumstances, as if it applied to quite another com- bination of circumstances. Even if it had been so,—which Mr. Gladstone quite fails to establish,—the quotation would not have been less " accurate." It was perfectly accurate, indeed, even if a change of circumstances had affected its relevancy to the pre- sent state of affairs. Bat to 999 men in every 1,000, the present circumstances will seem precisely those to which Mr. Glad- stone's solemn warning in 1885 applied. Mr. Gladstone says that the Tories were then in alliance with the Irish Party; but his speech dilated on the danger arising not out of that alliance, but out of its dissolution, and from the Liberals coming into power in alliance with the Irish Party, and. turning out the Tories, which is just what has actually happened. Mr. Gladstone's intellect is probably the only con- siderable intellect in the world which could discern or even imagine any discrepancy between the situation against which he warned the country, and the situation in which he now finds himself.
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