A SANGUINE GLADSTONIAN.
[To THE EDITOR or THE "SPECTATOR."] .SIE,—The amusingly simple-minded letter from my friend, Mr. J. Andrewes Reeve, which you published on April 22nd, is an opportune illustration of the invincible inability, even of Gladstonians who read the Spectator, to appreciate the in- tensity of abhorrence felt by Irish Unionists towards Mr. .Gladstone's policy. Mr. Reeve regrets that Mr. Gladstone has not gone to Ireland to " deal personally with the opponents of his policy," and to make " an earnest missionary effort." A similar regret, for various reasons—some of which made one thankful that the old gentleman was safe on the other side of the Channel I—I hoard repeatedly expressed in much more forcible language among the teeming thousands who swarmed into the streets of Belfast on Easter Tuesday to do honour to Mr. Balfour as the representative of uncompromising hostility to Rome-rule. Many of those men, with a simplicity almost equal to Mr. Reeve's, imagined that if Mr. Gladstone could only have witnessed that memorable demonstration, he would have been immediately converted from his evil ways ! Can Mr. Reeve seriously suppose that any cajolery of Mr. i Glad- stone's could induce Ulstermen to accept Home-rule n any shape or form P Submission may, perhaps, be wrung from Ulster by force, but never by consent.
Mr. Reeve is not unnaturally "puzzled" by hisleader's apparent shrinking from meeting with opponents from Irish Unionist organisations." He may well be so. If, however, the Prime Minister, instead of refusing to listen to those who 'differ from him, and instead of treating such bodies as the Belfast Chamber of Commerce with petulant and intolerant impatience, had extended to them an ordinary measure of 'courtesy, Irish loyalists—many of whom used to be able to say, with Tennyson, "we love Mr. Gladstone, but hate his policy —might, indeed, have retained something of respect for the man ; but their resistance to his scheme of Irish government would have been none the less determined, none the less uncompromising.—I am, Sir, Sce.,
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