from the nature of things combine the
advantages both of reticence and of outspokenness. Silence may have been
justified as a piece of clever party tactics; it is a very different
question whether the concealment of seven years has turned out high
statesmanship. Gladstonians, like other men, cannot, as the saying goes,
have their cake and eat it. They have had the advantages, they are now
paying the inevitable price of reserve. Unionists in any case are bound
to turn this invaluable time to account. Discussion of the constitution
is the education of the people.

In order, however, that this political training may be effective, our
parliamentary teachers must take care that the public are not confused
by the prominence necessarily given to details. Minute criticism of the
Bill is important, but at the present moment it is important only as
enforcing the radical vice of its main principles. No effort must be
spared to keep the mind of the nation well fixed upon these principles.
The surrender by the British Parliament and the British Government of
all effective part in the government of Ireland, the ambiguities of such
a term as 'Imperial supremacy' and all that these ambiguities involve,
the inadequacy and the futility of the Restrictions, the errors and
impolicy of the financial arrangements, above all the injustice to
England and the injury to Ireland of retaining, under a system of Home
Rule, even a single Irish representative at Westminster, these broad
considerations are the things which should be pressed, and pressed home,
upon the electors. Minor matters are good topics for parliamentary
discussion, but should not receive a confusing and illusory prominence.

The electors again must be made to feel that it is the essential
principle of Home Rule, the setting up of an Irish Government and an
Irish Parliament, to which Unionists are opposed. The least appearance
of concession to Home Rulers, or any action which gives increased
currency to the delusion, certainly cherished by some moderate
Gladstonians, that Home Rule can be identified with or cut down to
extended local self-government,[136] will be fatal to the cause of
Unionism. The concession to Ireland of a petty, paltry, peddling
legislature, which dare hardly call itself a Parliament, and is
officially designated say as a national council, combined with some
faint imitation of a Cabinet, called say a committee, would disappoint
and irritate Home Rulers; it wou