Renewed hope has stirred the Unionist leaders into renewed activity,
and on Wednesday Mr. Balfour, Mr. Chamberlain, and Lord Randolph Churchill addressed great meetings in Manchester, Birmingham, and Reading. Mr. Balfour ascribed the silence of Gladstonians upon the plat- form to a genuine fear upon the part of Gladstonian leaders. as to what their followers might say. The latter did not know even now what their chief intended to propose, and dreaded lest the followers should pledge themselves before the leaders had made up their minds. They would have done that, for instance, in regard to the Ninth Clause, about which the Cabinet had resolved upon a course entirely opposed to that suggested in the Bill itself. The Government had refused to specify the powers delegated to the Irish Legis- lature; and Lancashire therefore might, for one thing, find itself opposed within the same Kingdom by manufacturers exempted from all Factory Acts, and all Acts controlling the hours of labour. The Cabinet were, in fact, in a most difficult position as regards such questions, for they had to content the Nationalists, who mean by Supremacy a relation like that of Parliament to the Colonies ; and the English Gladstonians, who mean by Supremacy a relation like that of Parliament to the citizens of the United Kingdom. Mr. Balfour concluded with a singularly eloquent peroration, in which he admitted that the rejection of the Home-rule Bill would not of itself produce peace, but refused to purchase peace, an unattainable peace, by a payment in the life's blood of the Constitution.
Previous page
