On Wednesday, Mr. Gladstone explained his intentions with regard to
the use of the political guillotine in relation to the
Irish Home-rule Bill, intentions which are supposed to be the upshot of very sharp debates in the Cabinet, in which Mr. Gladstone's judgment was decidedly overruled by that of the majority of his colleagues. Of course, we have no means of knowing whether this assumption be true or not. The pro- posal is that all the Clauses from 5 to 8 shall be brought to a close by 10 p.m. next Thursday, July 6th ; that all the clauses not omitted or postponed, from Clause 9 to Clause 26 inclusive,
(eight clauses in all, since nine clauses in this part Of the Bill are to be either omitted or postponed), shall be finished by the same hour on July 13th (but this batch of clauses con- tains the Ninth Clause, as to the representation of Ireland in the Imperial Parliament, which should certainly have a week's debate to itself) ; that the Clauses from 27 to 40 should be brought to a close by 10 p.m. on Thursday, July 20th; and the clauses postponed, the new clauses, the schedules, and the preamble, should be brought to a close on Thursday, July 27th. This tremendous application to the Opposition of a moral equivalent for that celebrated iron chamber which used to be gradually contracted till it crushed its victims, shows curiously how even the most fanatic constitutionalists on one point will, under the irritation of a little contra- diction, hew away at the oldest Constitution, root and branch, rather than be foiled in their undertakings. Mr. Gladstone entered on this crusade under the conviction that the majority in every separable fragment of a nation is entitled to be treated with just the same 'constitutional deference as the majority of a nation historically invested with all the traditional sights of an ancient Constitution. And now he is assailing these latter rights with all the iconoclastic fury of an avenger of treason against the people.
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