Home Rule during the autumn and winter of
1885-86. Gladstone, we are told, had already, for many years past,
pondered anxiously at intervals about Ireland, and now he describes
himself as 'thinking incessantly about the matter' (vol. iii. p. 268),
and 'preparing myself by study and reflection' (p. 273).

He has first to consider the state of feeling in England and Ireland,
and to calculate to what extent and under what influences it may be
expected to change. As to English feeling, 'what I expect,' he says, 'is
a healthy slow fermentation in many minds working towards the final
product' (p. 261). The Irish desire for self-government, on the other
hand, will not change, and must be taken, within the time-limit of his
problem, as 'fixed' (p. 240). In both England and Ireland, however, he
believes that 'mutual attachment' may grow (p. 292).

Before making up his mind in favour of some kind of Home Rule, he
examines every thinkable alternative, especially the development of
Irish County Government, or a Federal arrangement in which all three of
the united kingdoms would be concerned. Here and there he finds
suggestions in the history of Austria-Hungary, of Norway and Sweden, or
of the 'colonial type' of government. Nearly every day he reads Burke,
and exclaims 'what a magazine of wisdom on Ireland and America' (p.
280). He gets much help from 'a chapter on semi-sovereign assemblies in
Dicey's _Law of the Constitution_ (p. 280). He tries to see the question
from fresh points of view in intimate personal discussions, and by
imagining what 'the civilised world' (p. 225) will think. As he gets
nearer to his subject, he has definite statistical reports made for him
by 'Welby and Hamilton on the figures' (p. 306), has 'stiff conclaves
about finance and land' (p. 298), and nearly comes to a final split with
Parnell on the question whether the Irish contribution to Imperial
taxation shall be a fifteenth or a twentieth.

Time and persons are important factors in his calculation. If Lord
Salisbury will consent to introduce some measure of Irish
self-government, the problem will be fundamentally altered, and the same
will happen if the general election produces a Liberal majority
independent of both Irish and Conservatives; and Mr. Morley describes as
underlying all his calculations 'the irresistible attraction for him of
all the grand and eternal commonplaces of liberty and self-government'
(p. 260).

It is not likely that Mr. M