Yesterday week, the Duke of Devonshire addressed a great Unionist
meeting in the Victoria Skating Rink, Southampton,. and pressed upon his audience the anomalous character of the position in which the Government had placed themselves.
bymaking a great stand on a point of policy,—Irish Home- rule,—on which they deliberately refuse to appeal to the- country. What, he asked, would Lord Grey and Lord John Russell have thought, at the time of the first great Reform Bill, of putting up with a great defeat by the House of Lords,. and quietly proceeding to place a number of other measures- before the country in the hope of overcoming the reluctance that the constituencies felt to insist on the House of Peers. withdrawing its opposition ? What, he asked, would Sir Robert Peel have thought of putting up with a rejection of the Free-trade policy by the House of Lords, and quietly going on to another series of measures, by the help of which he hoped to conquer the indifference of the country to Free-. trade ? Yet Lord Rosebery had admitted that the Govern- ment hoped, by the help of these other measures, to win over the country to accept Irish Home-rule less for its own sake- than for the sake of the policy with which it was to be associated. That was not the kind of public opinion to which, a House of Lords convinced in its own mind that Irish Home- rule would be injurious, could be expected to yield.
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