Lord Salisbury's speech in Edinburgh on Thursday was one of
the ablest he has delivered for a very long time. He took for his principal subject the enormous advance on any his- torical precedent which is involved in Mr. Gladstone's proposal to give Ireland administrative as well as legislative independ- ence, and pointed out the difficulties in which this would involve the 'United Kingdom in ease of any war with a neigh- bouring Naval Power, such as those of which we have had plenty of previous experience, when Ireland was as hostile as she is now, but had no independent Administration wherewith to carry out the fuggestions of her hostile animus. "When we quarrelled with Spain, they [the Irish] took the side of Spain. When we quarrelled with America, they took the side of America. When we quarrelled with France, they took the side of France." Of course, if we grant an independent Administration, that independent Administration will gravitate in its policy towards the popular side, which in Ireland is sure to be anti-British. Lord Salisbury also insisted very power- fully on the recent demonstration of the so-called Irish Noncon- formists, and spoke of the speech of the Moderator of the General Assembly as one that, if it could have been heard by all Scotch Presbyterians, would have been the death-blow of
Mr. Gladstone's policy to the mind of the Scotch Presbyterian Churches.
