The Duke of Argyll made a humorous and singularly- eloquent
little speech to a Women's Unionist Association in the Edinburgh Music Hall yesterday week. He proposed a resolution the last clause of which he admitted to be rather cumbrous, as it laid down "that until a plan is laid before the country which gives us to understand by what authority it is to be determined what matters, when taken one by one, are Irish, and what matters are Imperial (which goes to the very bottom of that subject, and explains in what manner that division of jurisdiction is to be accomplished), no effective judgment on it [namely, a proposal for Home-rule] can be pronounced." The reason for this cumbrous clause was that it is Mr. Gladstone's own, as advanced by him in answer to one- of Mr. Butt's Irish Home-rule resolutions. The Duke indi- cated his feeling that as democracy advances in these islands,- we stand more and more in need of a written Constitution which no common Act of Parliament could override. He evi- dently did not like the revolutionary influence gained in this country by a mind like Mr. Gladstone's, which the Duke called, in a phrase of Professor Blackie's, " hobby-horsicaL" Moreover, it was very dangerous to allow a statesman who could not by any possibility, on account of his age, work out for himself the tremendous change he advocated, to persuade the people of this country to adopt it, and then leave them in the larch to guard against its dangers for themselves as they best could. Mr. Gladstone proposed to disorganise the Constitution we have, and to let loose sectional forces which no words could restrain. Unionists were fighting for the authority of the Crown, the power of Parlia- ment, the integrity of the Empire. But they were fighting for much more besides, "for honour and truthfulness and openness and candour among public men, for the fundamental principles of liberty on which our rights depend, for everything by which Kings reign and Princes decree justice."
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