Mr. Goschen, who returned thanks for the toast of "The
House of Commons," recurred to his last year's theme, the high capacity and businesslike character of the present House, which he hopes to see admitted on all sides as soon as these sensational struggles over Ireland are a thing of the past. There, we fear, he is optimist, not, indeed, in indulging such a hope on the hypothesis that this sensational struggle shall be brought to a close, but in indulging the hope that that hypothesis is likely, within any reasonable time, to be realised. The Parnellite Members are ever with us, and would be even more with us if to-morrow they had their Home-role Parliament and their federal representation at Westminster, than they are to-day. And that is why we prefer to face the ills we know, instead of flying to others that we know not of. Still, in knowing these ills, we know their permanence, their in- evitability. The acute trouble in Ireland may be alleviated, say, in a century or so ; but hardly shall any subject of the Crown now living see the last of the sensational crises which have been growing in intensity for the last twenty years.
