LORD ROSEBERY AND THE LIBERAL UNIONISTS.
(TO TUE EDITOR OF TUE " SPECTATOR.1 Srn,—The very excellent article appearing in the Spectator of February 1st under the above heading, and in which you comment on a letter in your columns from Mr. H. F. Cornea, will assuredly prove to be pleasant reading to all Liberal Unionists, but perhaps most especially to those of us who reside in Ireland, and who must on that account take a lively interest in the various political phases obtaining amongst leading men in England. As you very properly say, Dir. Cornea's assumption that Lord Rosebery in espousing the Home-rule cause did so with the object of crushing it seems to me quite untenable, and to us in Ireland who have been for years strenuously opposing all the efforts of the Nationalist and rebel parties would it be any consolation to be told that Lord Rosebery, whose advocacy of the Home-rule cause has all along been one of the greatest dangers we had to combat, was in reality our best friend, and chief enemy to Home-rule? The solution of the whole matter is so very simple, and you, Sir, exactly explain the position. There can be small doubt that Lord Rosebery and many other leading Imperialist Liberals have been, and are now, groaning under the scomge of the Irish party, but LLD mere vague generalities or cryptic references to the meaning of phrases used in a speech will, I trust, ever be considered sufficient by the great bulk of the Liberal Unionist party. All members of our party, whether in Great Britain or Ireland, cannot fail to admire the power of the man or find anything but words of praise for most of his views on Imperial politics ; but wearied as some of us are by the apparent reluctance of our Con- servative rulers in Ireland to grapple firmly with the problem of Irish sedition and intimidation, and longing as we often do for the advent of some strong Liberal Unionist to office, yet to me it would seem nothing short of madness for our party to assume that Lord Rosebery's declarations on Home-rule are satisfactory, and nothing should satisfy us except an explicit, open, and ungrudging statement on his behalf that, if ever in office again, he, and those with him. will never on
any terms again bring in a Home-rule measure which gains the 'approval of the Nationalist party by the setting up of an independent or quasi-independent legislative body in Dublin that would have control of the Executive. To none of us is it a pleasant ordeal, either in our private or political capaci- ties, to admit that we are wrong ; but surely for English statesmen and English gentlemen, such as we know Lord Rosebery and his friends to be, the task should not be an impossible one, nor one from which they should shrink. Let us hope that, in one of those eloquent speeches which Lord Rosebery is about to deliver, he will unmistakably tell the country what his views are.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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