of political treatment, and that, above all things, there was to be no renewal of the stale policy of Coercion until the Irish people had got an opportunity of proving or disproving their fitness for self-government, unless, indeed, there should happen to be a recrudescence of crime which would render exceptional legislation necessary.  The election of 1886 turned almost entirely on the question of Irish government, and it is not too much to say that Conservatives and Liberal Unionists vied with Home Rulers in repudiating a return to the policy of coercion until the effect of some kind of self-government had been tried.  Of course, there were the usual platitudes about the necessity of maintaining law and order; but there was a consensus of profession that coercion should not be resorted to unless there was a fresh outbreak of crime and disorder in Ireland.

Such were the professions of the opponents of Home Rule in 1885 and in 1886.  They have now been in office for eighteen months, and what do we behold?  They have passed a perpetual Coercion Bill for Ireland, and the question of any kind of self-government has been relegated to an uncertain future.  In his recent speech at Birmingham (Sept. 29), Mr. Chamberlain has declared that the question is not ripe for solution, and that the question of disestablishment, in Wales, Scotland, and England successively, as well as the questions of Local Option, local government for Great Britain, and of the safety of life at sea, must take precedence of it.  That means the postponement of the reform of Irish Government to the Greek Kalends.  What justification can be made for this change of front?  No valid justification has been offered.  So far from there having been any increase of crime in the interval, there has been a very marked decrease.  When the Coercion Bill received the royal assent last August, Ireland was more free from crime than it had been for many years past.  Nothing had happened to account for the return to the policy of coercion in violation of the promise to try the experiment of conciliation.  The National League was in full vigour in 1885-1886, when the policy of coercion was abandoned; boycotting was just as prevalent, and outrages were much more numerous.

Under these circumstances it is the opponents of Home Rule, not its advocates, who owe an explanation to the public.  They defeated Mr. Gladstone’s Bill, but promised a Bill of their own.  Where is their Bill?  We hear nothing of it.  They have made a complete change of front.  They now tell us that the grievance of Ireland is entirely economic, and that the true solution of the Irish question is the abolition of dual ownership in land combined with a firm administration of the existing law.  England and Scotland are to have a large measure of local government next year; but Ireland is to wait till a more convenient season.  A more complete reversal of the policy proclaimed last summer by the so-called Unionists cannot be imagined.