Sir Henry James, who delivered an admirable speech at Sheffield
last Saturday (though he need hardly have said so much in favour of that very crusty politician of a former generation, Mr. John Arthur Roebuck, who believed " in the contrary " if ever a politician did), made it his chief point that the Unionists should exert all their strength to secure another appeal to the country on the merits, or rather demerits, of the Irish Home-rule Bill as a sole and separate issue, without com- plications and distractions, without sandwiching it between popular baits of any kind. He urged that this great and indeed enormous constitutional change ought to be judged separately by the people of this country, and that the democracy are under a heavy obligation to pronounce upon a revolution so far-reaching in its effects on both Irish and English interests, without confusing it with any other. His own summary of the situation was this :—" Gentlemen, Ireland has been bought, Great Britain has been sold." The-Glad- stonians, he said, would never be prosperous again till they had rid themselves of the Home-rule question. Recently, in the Eastern seas, a shark was caught in a dying condition. There was little but skin and bones on it. A post-mortem examination showed that the creature had swallowed a cask out of which the bottom had fallen, and afterwards everything which the hungry wretch swallowed went into the cask, instead of going into its stomach, and therefore contributed nothing to the nourishment of the animal. Just so the-Gladstonians go on swallowing enormously, but nothing nourishes them. All the nourishment goes into the Home-rule cask, and the party itself is reduced to skin and bones. Its artificial stomach de- prives its natural stomach of all its food. Sir Henry James's apophthegm will not easily be forgotten.
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