Sir Henry James made on Monday, in Glasgow, one of
the best Unionist speeches which the last two years have produced ; and that is saying a great deal, considering the exceptional power of the men who have devoted their abilities to this cause. He defined the ruling principle of the Liberal Party as the principle that had struggled to obtain for every person in the realm "equal rights and equal protection under equal laws," which implied at once a straggle to get laws made equal for all men,—as, for instance, when the Irish Church was dis- established,—and still more a struggle to prevent arbitrary and lawless interference with the operation of equal laws. Liberals opposed Mr. Gladstone's Home-rule Bill because it would have thrown into the hands of a party who had shown themselves arbitrary and tyrannical, the power both to make unequal laws in Ireland, and to enforce unequally the laws which had been made. Sir Henry James then went on to insist on the proposal to establish an Irish Executive responsible to the proposed Irish Legislature, as one totally new in the history of our relations with Ireland, one which Grattan never ventured to advocate, and which even O'Connell, when he proposed the repeal of the Union, expressly disclaimed ; and he showed how great a difference this proposal made in the guarantees for the protection of the Irish minority.
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