Mr. Chamberlain is evidently roused by the new phase of
the contest between the Government and the Opposition. On Tues- day, he spoke in Islington with a vehemence which shows that he at least has abandoned all hope of reconciliation. After adverting to the objections to his mission to America raised by the Irish-Americans, who "for thirty years have used the privileges conceded to them by their adopted country, to sow dissensions between England and America," and explaining some recent references in his speeches to Canada, he referred to Mr. Gladstone's addresses at Nottingham, in which be could see no sign of a conciliatory disposition. Mr. Gladstone, in his reference to Liberal reforms delayed by the Irish Question, had summoned up the ghosts of measures slain by his own action. "The policy of the Gladstone-Parnell alliance is to make the government of Ireland impossible ; and in doing it they are sapping the foundations of all order." Look at the scenes which have disgraced the most peaceful of all capitals ; the cause of these contemptible riots has been the unfounded charges brought by Mr. Gladstone against the police,—charges which injure every man interested in settled order and the security of our social life. "No reunion," concluded Mr. Chamber- lain, in a brilliant peroration, "is possible or is desirable" with men who, when the next appeal to the great tribunal of the nation is made, will be rejected by that vast majority "which believes that honesty is a virtue," and can neither be cajoled, nor bribed, nor coerced into a policy at once delusive and immoral.
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