17 MARCH 1917, Page 13

THE PRESENT POSITION OF HOME RULE.

[To THE EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOR."]

Sta,—" Whatever is morally wrong can never be politically right." Can there be a more forcible commentary on this well-known saying of Edmund Burke than the damnosa haereditas which Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule policy has left us? Whatever may be said of Home Rule in the abstract, it could not be justifiably put forward by the statesman who had not long before described its advocates as " marching through rapine, to the dismemberment of the Empire." Can we wonder at the Nemesis?-1 am, Sir, &c.,

B.