On home affairs, Mr. Goschen's line was much more sharply
marked out, and was clearly discriminated from the line of the Government He referred again, with some emphasis, to his difference with them on the subject of the county franchise. While paying his profound homage to Mr. Gladstone's genius and herculean labours in relation to the Irish Land Bill, he took great care to express his deep regret that a Bill so alien to Liberal principles should be held necessary for the pacifica- tion of Ireland ; and he avoided saying that he himself held it to be necessary, or that he was at all sanguine of the result. Against any extension of this species of legislation to England he protested in the strongest way, without dis- criminating what changes in the land-laws he would ap- prove, and what he would wholly disapprove ; and finally, he pronounced a panegyric on those Liberals who are called weak- kneed, because they dread the results of this special concession to Irish agitation. On the whole, Mr. Goschen virtually posed as the Whig statesman who regards hardly even with benevolent neutrality the great experiment of the Session. With the utmost personal loyalty to Lord Granville and Mr. Gladstone, he has the gravest doubts of the tendency of their policy, and holds unwillingly, but resolutely aloof.
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