Lord Salisbury addressed what is called the Grand Habita- tion
of the Primrose League on Saturday, in the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and dwelt on the complete justification of the Irish forecast which the Unionist Party put forth in 1886, when they declared that all Ireland wanted was firm enforcement of the criminal law, and such physical aid as a poor country of small resources may always fairly expect from a rich country of large resources which forms part, of the same political area. We have dwelt elsewhere on his admirable illustration of the mischievous result of allowing a revolutionary constitutional change to be mixed up with a dozen other proposals of quite subordinate importance in the issue placed before the country at a General Election. We may add here that Lord Salisbury pointed out how the appeal to the country would be further confused by the very success of the Irish policy of the Government, which had removed the so-called Irish Question from amongst the urgent questions of the hour, and had reduced it, in the opinion of the electors, to comparatively minute proportions as compared with the other issues on which the elections will inevitably turn. Statesmen know that if Mr. Gladstone were reinstated in power, all that had been done in Ireland during the last six years would be imme- diately undone. But English electors only see that the Irish worry is over, and do not see that preparations are being made to bring it back upon us in double force.
