Mr. Gladstone's difficulties are multiplying rapidly. There is a cry
in North Wales for requiring all Welsh Liberal candidates at the General Election to give a pledge that, if elected, they will refuse to support Home-rale unless Mr. Gladstone promises to disestablish the Church in Wales, if not in the same Session, at least in the same Parliament in which he passes Irish Home-rule. It is not at all likely that such a pledge will often be imposed upon Welsh Liberal candidates ; but it is certain that the attempt to impose it will cause great heartburnings amongst Welsh Liberals, that it will disgust some of them, and vehemently excite others to an angry particularism, and that, on the whole, it will be found to render Mr. Gladstone's majority less likely, and his course very much more difficult in case he should really obtain a majority at the General Election. Anything that visibly increases the mutual rivalries of sections of the Kingdom, will have, we believe, a great effect in impressing on the majority of our people the vast peril of this policy of disintegration.
