On the subject of Home-rule, Lord Salisbury made two very
effective replies to Mr. Gladstone. In the first place, as Mr.
Gladstone laid so much stress on the opinion of "the civilised world," would he accept the opinion of "the civilised world" on Free-trade, because if he would, he would find that opinion extremely unfavourable to Free-trade ? And in the next place, Lord Salisbury used an illustration which we ourselves have often had occasion to press on our readers,—the Italian feeling concerning Sicily. Would not any Italian statesman who proposed to give Sicily Home-rule be thought guilty of a kind of madness ? Yet does not Mr. Gladstone heartily rejoice in the Italian unity which he so much helped to establish P And can he not see that Sicily, like Ireland, is an island separated by the sea from the Kingdom to which she belongs, and that Sicily, even more than Ireland, has a history of her own, essentially different from that of the main- land, and with a long-separated nationality ? Why, then, does he not learn a lesson from the statesmanship of his Italian friends ? Lord Salisbury concluded by pointing out that the Government could not again allow Ireland to monopolise a whole Session, and by pointing to a reform in local government and local taxation as one of the urgent needs of "England, Scotland, and gallant little Wales." His only reference to financial policy was somewhat disquieting in its leaning towards a retaliatory tariff.
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