3 JANUARY 1891, Page 10

Mr. Henry Howorth, M.P., writes an impressive letter to- Thursday's

Times, in which, however, he seems to us, like Mr. Chamberlain, to take too sanguine a view of the situation... He says that everywhere,—in the railway, in the omnibus, and. in the workshop,—the utmost disgust with the Irish complica- tions is openly and even coarsely expressed, and that the English. Home-rulers only cling to Home-rule, because throwing off* Home-rule means losing the help of Mr. Gladstone. No doubt this is so for the present, but Mr. Howorth exaggerates the im- portance of a sudden ebb of opinion of this nature. Democracies. have short memories, and a year hence it might well happen,. if anything untoward occurred to set the democracy against. the present Government, that Mr. Gladstone would regain almost all his influence at the polls, even though he still; nailed,--as we do not doubt that he would still nail,—Irish Home-rule to the mast as a policy to .which he was not only deeply pledged, but heartily and sanguinely devoted. We. must not for one moment relax our efforts to found Unionist. convictions on a rock of immovable principle.