aders are now in possession of so much
of the new scheme as they may be able to discern through the glamour of
Mr. Gladstone's rhetoric; but the condition of affairs during the last
three months is a picture to remember for all time.

When the Hawarden scheme was disclosed before Christmas, Mr. Gladstone's
principal organ in the London Press declared within a week that the game
was up. The public would have none of it. The return of Mr. Gladstone to
office, with Mr. John Morley as Irish Secretary, suddenly revived the
hopes of the 'Pall Mall Gazette.' His new start in pursuit of the Irish
ideal banished the despair which had settled upon even the most reckless
of his adherents. The age, the physical power of the Premier, his long
public career, called up reflections which could not be disposed of in a
moment by foes, still less by former allies. He claimed time, and he has
taken the most important part of the Session, to mature his plans,
amidst the silence of the Opposition and of his Home Rule allies.

But, if his opponents were silent, his nomination of Mr. Morley to the
most important place in his Cabinet was not lost upon the motly crowd
outside. All the dancing dervishes of politics rushed upon the scene to
amaze a bewildered public with fantastical gyrations. 'The Empire of
Liberty,' cried one, 'can never employ coercion.' Another enthusiast
exclaimed, after reviewing the course of events since the Hawarden
revelations, 'To call these things to mind does one's heart good. It
seems as if nothing need be despaired of, as if words of hope need never
be empty words.' A well-known economist tried to ease the public
conscience, and to neutralize the resistance of the unfortunate Irish
landlord, by a nebulous scheme for buying up the landlords' rights, but
what the supply of money is to be, and who is to supply it, are
questions to which the answers vary every hour. A separate Parliament is
to be accompanied by a system of guarantees, and Professor Rogers
declares that the surest guarantee was the hostages we have in the two
millions of Irish inhabiting Great Britain; as if these unfortunate
persons could be made liable to imprisonment or torture in order to
secure the good conduct of Mr. Parnell's Dublin Cabinet, as if such an
arrangement, if made, would have the slightest effect upon the Irish
revolutionists.

But whilst Mr. Gladstone lingered, waiting to see how far the outer
public could be brought into sympathy w