Wednesday's debate was insignificant, and Thursday's remarkable only for the
speeches of Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. T. W. Russell, and Mr. Healy. Mr. Chamberlain remarked on the absolute suppression of all mention of that part of the amendment which recommended a policy of conciliation,—in his opinion, by far the most important. As for the petty attacks on Mr. Balfour, he remarked that if Mr. Balfour too became a convert to Home-rule, he would be immediately overwhelmed with adulation, though the adulation might not really imply much respect. But Mr. Chamberlain wanted to know what the policy of conciliation meant, for he could quite conceive a policy of conciliation to which he could give in his adhesion. If it carried a full and adequate treatment of the agrarian question, he believed that the Home-rule question might either disappear altogether, or at least that whatever demands were still pressed on that head, might be granted without the danger which now besets any measure of that kind. Mr. Chamberlain seems to us far too ready to concede something of a Canadian type of Home-rule to Ireland. But it would be impossible to imagine an abler speech conceived in a more conciliatory frame of mind.
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