Mr. Thomas Case, Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, has
put together, in a letter to the Times of Thursday, a rather important selection of Mr. Gladstone's expressions of opinion as to the limits of a safe Home-rule, though he has connected them together by a running commentary of so acri- monious a kind, that his letter will be often thrown aside unread by those whom he would chiefly wish to read it. On March 4th, 1880, in the course of the Midlothian campaign, Mr. Gladstone declared that "the true supporters of the Union are those who firmly uphold the supreme authority of Parliament, but exercise that authority to bind the three nations by the indissoluble tie of liberal and equal laws," and this he asserted to be the purpose of the Liberal Party. And on March 20th, 1880, he said that the Liberals, " so far from being about to destroy or impair the authority and the supremacy of Parliament," were the true props of that authority. Mr. Case wants to pin Mr. Gladstone to these and many similar assertions, to which, as we quite agree, the drift of all Mr. John Morley's recent speeches,—and, indeed, of Mr. Gladstone's own speech on the Address,—appears to be opposed, since it is certain that if these speeches mean anything, they mean a very grave lessening and impairing of the authority of Parliament over the Irish people. But it is obvious that statesmen are not to be thought dishonest simply because they use language in one year which they are compelled to enlarge and extend as circumstances alter. Nevertheless, it is very important that the English people should realise what Mr. Gladstone and Mr. John Morley are really employed in devising, —namely, how to impair and lessen the actual legislative authority of Parliament over Ireland without, in essential parts, utterly destroying it.
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