On Wednesday, a letter from the Duke of Argyll was
pub- lished in regard to the Bute election, in which he deals with Mr. Gladstone's encouragement of Separatist schemes in Scotland. He points out that "Mr. Gladstone's attempt to stir up a Separatist jealousy in Scotland is all the more- singularly inappropriate when the Scotch Members have lately shown their power to determine for the United Kingdom, and not for Scotland only, a question of the largest policy." The Duke asserts that the concession of gratuitous education was "due entirely to the action of the Scotch Members in agreeing among themselves that such would be the best mode of disposing of a large sum of revenue which was placed at their command. So complete is the Union of the two Kingdoms,. that such a concession made in Scotland could not be withheld in England also, and thus the sole action of the Scotch Members practically determined the matter." This is possibly a little overstated, but the fact remains that here, and in a hundred other questions, the Scotch Members have profoundly influenced legislation applied both to the United Kingdom and to England alone. The Scotch, the Welsh, and the Irish govern- us every bit as much as we govern them. Yet, under the present Home-rule scheme, the Irish, and apparently the Scotch and. Welsh Members if they care to ask for it, are to go on governing us,. while we abandon, in a fit of sentimentality engendered by the fear of worry, the attempt to govern them.
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