So decided was the impression made by this speech that
Lord Salisbury had nothing to propose but coercion for twenty years, and that he regarded emigration as the only solution of the landlord difficulty, that the advocates of Home-rule grew exultant, and even hot Tories condemned the utterance as unguarded. Lord Salisbury, therefore, on Wednesday, at the general meeting of the Primrose League, explained his speech of Saturday. He denied that he had recommended coercion only. Crime must be put down, but the duty of a Government was not only to repress crime, but to ameliorate the condition of its people. Moreover, he had not recommended emigration, but had only observed that, if a large sum of money was to be spent, it had better be expended on emigration than "on the very contemptible process of buying out landlords." We cannot see that the explanation removes much of the sting of the original speech, though the meaning of that speech has been exaggerated. In power, Lord Salisbury would probably not rely solely on repression ; but he says in so many words that he should meet the agrarian difficulty only by protecting the landlords ; and it is not unnatural for Irishmen to say that in the existing economic condition, this involves direct repression as the main feature of British policy. Lord Hartington appears, from a letter to a correspondent, disposed to adapt the judicial rent to a sliding-scale of prices ; and Mr. Goschen is inclined to believe, in England as well as Ireland, that a large creation of freeholds is essential to social safety.
