It is hopeless to summarise such a speech. We can
only touch on a few principal points. Mr. Gladstone began by emphatically insisting that the policy of the Government in relation to Home- rule could not be severed from its policy in relation to Irish land, which he must nevertheless reserve for another occasion, and he then passed to the subject of Irish crime, insisting on its character and nature, and especially on the Irish indifference to law founded on the belief that the law is of alien origin, and bears, in fact, the stamp of the foreigner. To repress it, coercion, he said, must not be fitful and irregular, and open to the scrutiny of the public, but must be strong and steady, and secret in its opera- tions. Such coercion might succeed, butwould never be tried by Great Britain till everything else had failed; and the object of ths Government was to see whether by nationalising the law, and giving over both Legislature and Administration into Irish hands, they could not make that law popular which had hitherto been so thoroughly hated. The general idea of the Government was to seek in the direction indicated by Mr. Grattan when he said, " I demand the continued severance of the Parliaments, with a view to the continued and everlasting unity of the Empire."
