Mr. Chamberlain made an effective speech in St. Andrew's Hall,
Glasgow, on Tuesday. He did not regard the Clerkenwell- cum-Limehouse programme, he said, as serious. He looked upon it as so much political birdlime ; for its authors hardly tried to conceal their indifference to it. If Mr. Gladstone had really cared for " One man, one vote," he would not have offered it his personal resistance in 1884, the crisis at which it certainly had most chance of being carried, and when Mr. Chamberlain himself had personally advocated it. But you cannot have Reform Bills every few years. Whenever another comes, there must be a new redistribution of seats ; and whenever that happens, London will gain a great accession of representatives, while Ireland will lose a great many. The proposal to adopt the principle of " One man, one vote," within four years of the date at which it was formally rejected by Mr. Gladstone himself, is simply unreal. And so, too, is the proposal to reopen the question of Disestablishment in Scotland and Wales. Mr. Gladstone thought in 1885 that Disestablishment was not a question of practical politics,—Mr. Chamberlain, who thought it was, and that it might be brought to the front, getting very much snubbed for his pains. Mr. Chamberlain has now come to the conclusion that his opponents were right, and that the Disestablishment Question is not ripe for settle- ment ; but still less is the Home-rule Question, on which there is quite as little general agreement as on the Disestablishment Question. And, in Mr. Chamberlain's opinion, both should be waived, the Unionist Radicals agreeing to postpone indefinitely the Disestablishment Question, on condition that the Gladstonian Radicals postpone indefinitely the Irish Home-rule Question. " The sacrifices which we may be called upon to make in order to preserve the Union," will be nothing to the sacrifices which the Gladstonians will have to make to the Parnellites "in order to break it up." Already the most distinct intimations have been made by Parnellite Members as to the nature of these sacrifices.
