Lord Hartington was enthusiastically received at Belfast on Thursday by
the Association of Liberal Unionists of Ulster, and directed his speech mainly to the local circumstances of his audience. He pointed out what is really noteworthy, that there is not a Gladstonian left in Ulster, or, indeed, in Ireland, every one being either a Conservative, a Liberal Unionist, or a Parnellite,—that is, a man who will vote with Mr. Gladstone as long as he obeys Mr. Parnell, and no longer. He believed this would be equally tree of the next Election, the contest being, in truth, confined to those three parties, to the exclusion of the fourth, which was to have been made dominant by the Liberal adoption of Home-rule. Lord Harlington also pointed out that, while Ulster was friendly to local self-government, it was to a self-government regulated and inspired by an Imperial Parliament, and not by a body sitting in Dublin, which might be as centralising as ever the Castle had been ; "and might be, and so far as you can see, would be, ten times as tyrannical towards portions of the inhabitants of Ireland." For himself, he maintained that he had a right, after the enormous change of policy in the Liberal Party, to reconsider the whole question of the fitting time for the establishment of local self-government in Ireland, and to ask, as the condition precedent of any such grant, that the Parnellites and their Liberal allies should cease from employing in their agitation anybut constitutional means. The speech was warmly received, and though too local to have much general effect, it marks Lord Hartington's opinion very distinctly.
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