Sixteen Liberal Peers and twenty-eight Members of the Liberal Party
in the House of Commons, are stated to have already joined the Liberal Committee for maintaining the Legis- lative Union between Great Britain and Ireland. The list, how- ever, does not contain nearly all the names of the thoroughly good Liberals in the House of Commons who have declared their opposition to it, nor does it include any of those who, like Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Caine, object to the scheme of the Govern- ment without being willing to pledge themselves not to propose a scheme of their own. It cannot be doubted that the Liberals of the middle class have declared against Irish Home-rule with far greater unanimity than they have ever before shown in re- sisting a proposal of the leader of their party, and that if Mr. Gladstone carries his scheme through the House of Commons, it will involve this amongst all its many mischievous results,— that it will divide dangerously and ominously the Liberals of the working class from the Liberals of the more educated class, and leave the former without associates of a kind to whose larger knowledge the artisans and labourers can look up. It will be the beginning of a social split.
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