On Thursday, Mr. Gladstone made a great speech to the
Yorkshire Home rulers, at a dinner given to him and them by Mr. Barran, M.P. for the Otley Division of Yorkshire. The chief note of the speech was a serene, almost majestic con- fidence in the triumph of Home-rule, and a very calm and cordial attitude towards all opponents. Mr. Gladstone believed that Lord Salisbury and his friends who talked of the nightmare of the Irish Question, were themselves more than half convinced that Home-rule must come. He declared that it was no more use trying to touch any other great question till the Irish Ques- tion was out of the way, than it would be to move on a train till the dArie of a collision had been removed from the line on which the train was placed. He virtually gave up the notion of pledging English credit for the settlement of the land question, but declared that Irish credit could not be pledged without the previous creation of an Irish Legislature. He declared that the Imperial Parliament must retain its absolute supremacy,—nay, that he himself would have nothing to say to a repeal of the Union. Otherwise, he gave up nothing, and he even ridiculed any solution which the eighty-five Parnellites themselves were not able to accept. He complimented Yorkshire greatly on its sympathy with Home-rule. But what Yorkshire may think of the "Plan of Campaign," which Mr. Gladstone does not venture to condemn,—possibly he thinks that a constitutional majority of every nation is morally infallible,—he did not venture to predict.
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