Referrin g to the reasons why Ireland is so discontented, Lord
Salisbury denied that the question of nationality has very much to do with it. Directly the Irish Nationalists leave West- minster, they drop the national cry altogether, and speak only of the land question; and Lord Salisbury maintained that it is really the land question, and not the question of nationality, which makes Ireland so unmanageable. In Greece, in Italy, in the Tyrol, in France, in Belgium, during the agitations for national freedom, it would have been impossible to carry the country with the agitators by " preaching a wholesale system of fraudulent bankruptcy." Yet that is the course which the Irish agitators find most effective. Remedial measures of no light importance were possible in Ireland, but they could not be applied till the law had been strengthened and enforced. " Legislative relief, instead of tending to quiet, will only aggravate the disorder, so long as it is believed that more agitation can wring more measures of the same kind out
of the Legislature of this country." Nevertheless, the impression that hie speech suggested an indefinite delay of remedial measures is, we believe, quite a mistaken one. What Lord Salisbury wants the country to understand is that it is no mere question of statesmen or parties on which we are now engaged, but that it is a question of our national existence. We have entered on a struggle for existence at a time when, said Lord Salisbury, too much softness has crept into our counsels, and when it is believed that great issues could be decided bra plentiful administration of platitudes and rose-water. "We are undertaking no enterprise against liberty ; on the contrary, we are confronting the moat dangerous enemies to liberty. Our object is to restore real freedom to the Irish people." If only Lord Salisbury would live up to the latter part of his admirable speech, then, when the harvest is passed and the summer is ended, we might be able to boast that we were really saved.
