Mr. Gladstone then passed to the subject of test questions,
demonstrating that under our present procedure it is impos- sible to have more than one practical test question for a single General Election, if there is to be any real appeal to the people at all,—more's the pity that we cannot adopt some- thing like the Swiss Referendum on minor questions of a practical kind,—and vehemently attacked Parliament for having voted the closure on the Crimes Bill of 1887. But Mr. Gladstone's own Government dealt in precisely the same way with Mr. Forster's Protection Act of 1881. Then Mr. Gladstone repeated again what he has always said as to Gladstonian obstruction. He reiterated his attack on the mission of Sir Lintorn Simmons to the Pope concerning mixed marriages in Malta, and concluded with an eloquent appeal to apply to Ireland the policy which had created a strong Bulgaria. Does not that imply the monstrous assumption that it is as necessary a work to paralyse England as to paralyse Turkey,—that England's is no less a tyranny in Ireland than Turkey's was in Bulgaria?
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