Mr. Plunket having urged in eloquent language Mr. Brod- rick's
argument over again, Mr. Gladstone replied with great fire that it was quite impossible to go back to the policy of in- justice to Ireland, from which this country had suffered so much, and that it was the Conservatives, not the Government, who flattered the Irish Home-rulers by predicting that they would hold the destinies of this country in the hollow of their hands,—that it was Mr. Plunket, not himself, who assured the Parnellites that they were about to become omnipotent. Sir Stafford Northcote replied, not by pressing the particular amend- ment, but by asserting that till the Reform Bill could be made complete, the Conservatives had a right to object to the inclusion of any and every part of the United Kingdom in it, and especially
to the inclusion of that part which would most suffer from the incompleteness of the Bill.
