“I’d give the lands of Deloraine
    Dark Musgrave were alive again.”

The Irish landlords have already begun to realize the mistake they made when they rejected Mr. Gladstone’s policy of Home Rule and Land Purchase.  It is the old story of the Sibyl’s books.  No British Government will ever again offer such terms to the Irish landlords as they refused to accept from Mr. Gladstone.  On the other hand, Home Rule is inevitable.  Can any reflective person really suppose that the democracy of Great Britain will consent to refuse to share with the Irish people the boon of self-government which will be offered to themselves next year?  Any attempt to exclude the Irish from the benefits of such a scheme, after all the promises of the last general election, would almost certainly wreck the government; for constituencies have ways and means of impressing their wills on their representatives in Parliament even without a dissolution.  If, on the other hand, Ireland should be included in a general scheme of local Government, the question of who shall control the police will arise.  In Great Britain the police, of course, will be under local control.  To refuse this to Ireland would be to offer a boon with a stigma attached to it.  The Irish members agreed to let the control of the constabulary remain, under Mr. Gladstone’s scheme, for some years in the hands of the British Government; but they would not agree to this while Dublin Castle ruled the country.  Moreover, the formidable difficulty suggested by Lord Salisbury and Mr. John Stuart Mill (see pp. 115, 116) would appear the moment men began seriously to consider the question of local government for Ireland.  The government of Dublin Castle would have to go, but something would have to be put in its place; and when that point has been reached it will probably be seen that nothing much better or safer can be found than some plan on the main lines of Mr. Gladstone’s Bill.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 15:  Speech at Manchester, May 7, 1886, by Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, who was a member of the Cabinet to which Mr. Chamberlain’s scheme was submitted.]

[Footnote 16:  Hansard, vol. 220, pp. 708, 715.]

[Footnote 17:  Considerations on Representative Government, p. 281.]

[Footnote 18:  Dicey’s England’s Case against Home Rule, pp. 25-31, and Letter in Spectator of September 17th, 1887.]

[Footnote 19:  From the beginning of 1880 till now there have been six Viceroys and ten Chief Secretaries in Dublin—­namely, Duke of Marlborough, Earls Cowper and Spencer, Earls of Carnarvon and Aberdeen, and the Marquis of Londonderry; Mr. Lowther, Mr. Forster, Lord F. Cavendish, Mr. Trevelyan, Mr. Campbell Bannerman, Sir W. Hart Dyke, Mr. W.H.  Smith, Mr. J. Morley, Sir M. Hicks-Beach, and Mr. A. Balfour.  A fine example, truly, of stable government and continuous policy!]