22 DECEMBER 1888, Page 2

Mr. Gladstone then went on to advocate the reform of

the register, and the adoption of the principle of "One man, one vote," as the condition sine rid non of an efficiently Glad- stonian Parliament. You must sharpen your blunt razor, he said, before you can shave, and you must quicken the Radicalism of your Parliament before you can get the Glad- stonian programme passed in it. He wishes, apparently, to enfranchise all leaseholds,—will not that render it very difficult to get leases for the future ?—to put the police of London under the local Parliament of London, to carry a system of free schools, and to disestablish the Church in Scotland and in Wales ; in short, Mr. Morley's programme is accepted by Mr. Gladstone en bloc. And then he attacked the Irish Question, maintaining, oddly enough, not only that the Irish are loyal to their own Irish leaders, which they certainly are,--through thick and thin, evil and good,--but that the same loyalty has been shown to England whenever there has been even a "visionary hope" of combining "loyalty with justice." There is a fine ignoring there of the attitude taken up by the Irish people towards himself in 1880-81. Was there not something more than a "visionary hope" of combining "loyalty with justice" then ? And did not the Irish people, at the sugges- tion of their leaders, reject him with a unanimity, and we might almost say a brutality, that horrified his friends, even if it made no impression on himself?