We are bound to say that we sympathise very strongly
with Lord Rosebery's plea for a national settlement in which, though no doubt the Government in power must have a pre- dominant voice, due weight -would be given to the views of the Opposition, and still more to that section of moderate opinion, so large in the country though so small in Parlia- ment, which is intensely anxious that the fabric of the Con- stitution should not be sacrificed in a party scramble. But, though we feel this as strongly as Lord Rosebery, we must admit, profoundly painful as the admission is, that we cannot see the slightest chance of the Government meeting in this matter the claims of reason and good sense. That a great many members of the Cabinet would like to meet those claims we do not doubt, but they are absolutely precluded from doing so by the relations in which the Ministry try stand to the Irish Party.
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