l with a state of things in Ireland
entirely different from any that had been known there for fifty
years.... With a political revolution we have ample strength to
cope. There is no reason why our cheeks should grow pale, or why
our hearts should sink, at the idea of grappling with a political
revolution. The strength of this country is tenfold what is
required for such a purpose. But a social revolution is a very
different matter.... The seat and source of the movement was not
to be found during the time the government was in power. It is to
be looked for in the foundation of the land league.(33)

Two years later he said at Edinburgh:--

I frankly admit I had had much upon my hands connected with the
doings of the Beaconsfield government in almost every quarter of
the world, and I did not know, no one knew, the severity of the
crisis that was already swelling upon the horizon, and that
shortly after rushed upon us like a flood.(34)

So came upon them by degrees the predominance of Irish affairs and Irish
activity in the parliament of 1880, which had been chosen without much
reference to Ireland.

II

A social revolution with the land league for its organ in Ireland, and Mr.
Parnell and his party for its organ in parliament, now, in Mr. Gladstone's
words, rushed upon him and his government like a flood. The mind of the
country was violently drawn from Dulcigno and Thessaly, from Batoum and
Erzeroum, from the wild squalor of Macedonia and Armenia to squalor not
less wild in Connaught and Munster, in Mayo, Galway, Sligo, Kerry.
Agrarian agitation on the one hand, parliamentary violence on the other,
were the two potent weapons by which the Irish revolutionary leader
assailed the misrule of the British garrison as the agents of the British
parliament in his country. This formidable movement slowly unmasked
itself. The Irish government, represented by Mr. Forster in the cabinet,
began by allowing the law conferring exceptional powers upon the executive
to lapse. The main reason was want of time to pass a fresh Act. In view of
the undoubted distress in some parts of Ireland, and of the harshness of
certain evictions, the government further persuaded the House of Commons
to pass a bill for compensating an evicted tenant on certain conditions,
if the landlord turned him out of his holding. The bill was no easy dose
either for the cabinet or its friends. L