On Tuesday, Mr. Gladstone opened the debate in a speech
of great brilliance, which showed that, as an orator at least, he has lost nothing of his power. He said that the proposal of the Government, instead of being a care, instead of being a palliation, could do nothing but "aggravate in their deepest root and foundation the worst disorders of Ireland." Ile was indignant at the urgency granted, so suspending the free initiative of private Members. He was indignant at the prospect of no Easter adjournment, and treated it as a
threat ; and be declared that Mr. Balfour load made out no ease at all for his Bill. He commented on the infinitesimal increase in Irish crime. He ridiculed the statements of the Irish Judges about the utter failure of the authority of the law as "passages soaring into the region of speculation," and as passages in respect of which the Judges had "no judicial authority whatever." He referred to one of the outrages cited by Mr. Balfour,—the cutting off a girl's hair and pouring pitch on her head,—as "a very bad and abominable outrage,' but not of Nationalist invention, on the contrary, an inven- tion of the Government of Ireland of that disgraceful period "preceding the unhappy incorporating Union." He- taunted Lord Salisbury with having no remedy to propose for boycotting in 1885, and with saying that it was beyond the scope of legislation. Of the proposed change of venue to England, Mr. Gladstone said,—" I did not believe that I should live to see the day when a proposal so insulting, so exasperating, so utterly in contrast with the whole lessons which Irish history. teaches, would have been submitted to a British House of Commons." He dwelt on the vast responsibility which English Unionists would incur if they supported the proposals of the Government ; and he concluded a very eloquent speech by declaring his belief that it was the support of the Opposition for the National cause in Ireland which had diminished outrages, and that strenuous resistance to this measure would beat serve not only the cause of Ireland, but the cause of "Britain and ice world-wide Empire."
Previous page
