Though it may be said that the acceptance of the Bill without prejudice would not have stultified the principles already vindicated in a long struggle by the Irish people, the body as constituted, it was felt, would have served the purpose of the Unionist party by dividing without a sufficient quid pro quo the attention of the Irish people from their devotion to the cause for the broad principles of which they have been striving, and there was this further danger that a body so restricted in its scope and anti-democratic in its administration would have broken down in action, and would have in this way provided Unionists with the very strongest possible argument for opposition to a full autonomy.

While a certain proportion of Liberals are prepared to admit that the Bill made havoc of Liberal principles there is a Laodicean section who have greatly blamed Irish Nationalists for having refused what was offered them, when having asked for bread they were given a stone.  To such people as I have in mind I should like to quote what Mr. Gladstone wrote to Lord Hartington on November 10th, 1885:—­

“If that consummation—­the concession to Ireland of full power to manage her own local affairs—­is in any way to be contemplated, action at a stroke will be more honourable, less unsafe, less uneasy than the jolting process of a series of partial measures."[28]

The position of that section of Liberals is strange which is represented by the assertion that their party has already made enough sacrifices in regard to Irish affairs, and which is anxious to return to the laissez faire policy of their mid-Victorian predecessors.  The point I submit is this, either Liberals do or they do not believe in the principle of self-government as applied to Ireland, and if they do adhere to it no effort is too great, no difficulty too extreme, for them to face in the attempt to solve so serious a problem.  Those who think that because in 1886, and again in 1893, the Liberals, with Irish support, unsuccessfully attempted to solve the Irish question, they have thereby contracted out of their moral obligation, take a very curious view of the responsibilities of popular government; but it is not so strange as the position of those who hold that because in 1907 the Irish people refused a particular form of change in the methods of government for which they never asked, they have in consequence closed every avenue to constitutional reform which can be opened for many years.

In politics it is often the unexpected that happens, and he would be a bold prophet who should declare it impossible that within a few years Liberals may not return in toto to the advocacy of sound principles in regard to Ireland, the abandonment of which is to be traced to the recrudescence of Whiggism after Mr. Gladstone’s death and the desire to find some line of policy which might be pilloried as a scapegoat to account for the disgust of the country