Mr. Goschen's speech . at Leeds on the following night
proved most powerfully the almost intolerable position in which the Prime Minister is placing the House of Commons, by making the concession of an Irish Legislature in Dublin the only point on which he insists as the essential principle of the Irish measures ; so that he asks the House of Commons to affirm that principle without having any regard to the question whether it can be safely embodied in any given Act of Parliament, and whether the conditions really exist at the present time for so embodying it. He remarked on Mr. Gladstone's curious threat to the Irish landlords, contained in the remark that "the sands are running in the hour-glass," and interpreted it as coming to something like this :—" Fools that you have not clutched at the gold which I have offered you, because you were too anxious for the position in which I was placing your country. Fools that you have not taken the ransom which at this moment I offer you. If you do not take it, then let the march through rapine to disintegration' take place. Here is your last chance : take this, and desert your posts as patriots in Ireland."
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