government.  At the same time, a systematic attempt was made to deal with the question of perennial poverty in the extreme West of Ireland in what came to be known as the “Congested Districts.”  The construction of railways and piers, the draining of land, and the provision of instruction in agriculture, fisheries, etc., speedily gave promise of a new era in the economic history of a hitherto helpless and hopeless population.

All this was done by Mr. Balfour and his successors in spite of opposition and obstruction of a kind such as no Chief Secretary had ever before had to encounter.  Formerly, all through the centuries, whenever a Viceroy or Chief Secretary was face to face with an organised outbreak of crime and sedition in Ireland, both British parties united in supporting and strengthening the hands of the executive as representing the Crown.  Mr. Gladstone’s extraordinary reversal of policy and principle in the winter of 1885-86 put an end to all this, and gravely increased the difficulties of the Irish Government.

When Mr. Gladstone was first confronted with the demand for Home Rule, even in the mild and constitutional form advocated by Mr. Isaac Butt, and his Home Government Association, founded in the autumn of 1870, he promptly declared, like Mr. John Morley, that legislative Union with Great Britain was the only position permanently possible for an island situated as Ireland is.  In a speech at Aberdeen[19] he indignantly asked—­

“Can any sensible man, can any rational man, suppose that at this time of day, in this condition of the world, we are going to disintegrate the great capital institutions of this country for the purpose of making ourselves ridiculous in the sight of all mankind and crippling any powers we possess for conferring benefits on the country to which we belong.”

And for fifteen years, in power or in opposition, Mr. Gladstone preached and acted upon the same doctrine.  When the Land League was founded he denounced it as an organisation whose steps were “dogged with crime,” and whose march was “through rapine to the dismemberment of the Empire.”  The League was finally “proclaimed” by his Government as a criminal conspiracy and its members, from Mr. Parnell downwards, arrested and imprisoned without trial as being “reasonably suspected” of criminal practices.

This continued until in an unfortunate moment for himself Mr. Gladstone discovered, in November, 1885, that the votes of Mr. Parnell and his eighty-six colleagues were necessary for his own return to power as Prime Minister, whereupon he entered into negotiations which resulted, on the one hand, in his securing the necessary votes, and on the other in his accepting the principles and the policy of those whom until then he had denounced and imprisoned as instigators to crime and sedition.  He rightly recognised that there was no half-way house, and that he could not become a Home Ruler without