On Monday Mr. John Redmond brought forward his amend- ment
to the Address, representing to her Majesty that the time had come when the Ministry should have recommended her to dissolve Parliament, and to submit the question of Home-rule for Ireland to the electors of the United Kingdom. Mr. Redmond ascribed the retrogression in the wish for Home- rule since 1886 and 1887 to the policy of trying to sandwich Irish Home-rule between such English measures as Disestab- lishment and Payment of Members, and traced the languor on the subject to the policy of the Government in keeping Home-rule in the background. Mr. Morley replied that English constituencies would not like Home.rule the better for finding that all other questions in which Great Britain took a direct interest were blocked out by Ireland, and he reminded Mr. Redmond that it was Mr. Gladstone himself who commenced the policy on which Mr. Redmond had commented with such disdain. And Mr. Healy, in a very clever speech, showed that there was really nothing else to be done since the English constituencies would not allow all the legislation which they thought they needed themselves, to be blocked out by the restless constituencies of Ireland. He described it as the first time that an Irish party had ever given its votes without getting something for them. The truth is that while every- body recognises the fact that Irish Home-rule is very far from popular in Great Britain, the Parnellites fancy that they could more easily squeeze useful concessions out of the Unionists with a majority powerful enough to carry their measures easily in the Commons, and still more easily in the Lords, than they can out of a divided and discouraged party without any adequate majority.
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