r upon
England. But the immediate dealing with it in a particular way is not a
necessity. Were the Home Rule Bill, and every Home Rule Bill, rejected
by Parliament, the United Kingdom would be as safe as it has been at any
time for the last ninety years and more.

In plain truth we have all of us forgotten the meaning of necessity.
Gladstonians have come honestly to confuse the needs of a party with the
necessities of the country. This is a delusion that at all times and in
all lands affects great political connections which, having once
rendered high services to the nation, have outlived the valid reasons
for their existence. The Republicans saved the United States from
disruption. Hence in 1888, when Secession was an historical memory, many
of the most to be respected among Americans believed that the rule of an
honest Democrat was a worse evil than the rule of a corrupt Republican.
Thousands of Frenchmen, amidst the moral bankruptcy of Republican
politicians, still hold that, because Republicans years ago saved France
from ruin, even reconciled Conservatives cannot in the year 1893 be
placed in office without danger to the commonwealth. So it is abroad; so
it has been in England. In 1760 the best and wisest of English statesmen
deemed it impossible that England should be rightly governed by any
politicians but the representatives of the Revolution Families. In 1829
honest citizens trembled at the thought of power passing into the hands
of the Whigs; for the Tories had ruled for nearly sixty years, and the
Tories had preserved England from revolution and invasion. So at this
moment to many well-meaning Liberals the long predominance of the
Liberal party makes the possibility of a Cabinet containing politicians
who may in any sense be called Tories seem a monstrous calamity, which
it is a necessity to avert. Vain to point out that Lord Salisbury and
Mr. Balfour are such Tories as Eldon would have called Jacobins and Lord
Melbourne Radicals, and that, they are allied with the best and most
trustworthy of living Liberal leaders. Their is no arguing with
sentiment; it is necessary to keep the Gladstonian Liberals in office,
and the constitution must be sacrificed in order that Lord Salisbury may
not resume the Premiership. But there is a deeper cause than all this
for our strange ideas of necessity. Habitual ease and unvarying
prosperity have for a moment lowered the national spirit. Englishmen
confuse inconveniences with