ath of honour in Ireland was equally the path of honour and of safety in
Great Britain. Were British liberals, who had given him a majority, partly
from disgust at Irish coercion, partly from faith that he could produce a
working plan of Irish government, and partly from hopes of reforms of
their own--were they to learn that their leaders could do nothing for any
of their special objects?

Mr. Gladstone found some consolation in a precedent. In 1835, he argued,
"the Melbourne government came in with a British minority, swelled into a
majority hardly touching thirty by the O'Connell contingent of forty. And
they staid in for six years and a half, the longest lived government since
Lord Liverpool's.(298) But the Irish were under the command of a master;
and Ireland, scarcely beginning her political life, had to be content with
small mercies. Lastly, that government was rather slack, and on this
ground perhaps could not well be taken as a pattern." In the present case,
the attitude of the Parnellite group who continued the schism that began
in the events of the winter of 1890, was not likely to prove a grave
difficulty in parliament, and in fact it did not. The mischief here was in
the effect of Irish feuds upon public opinion in the country. As Mr.
Gladstone put it in the course of a letter that he had occasion to write
to me (November 26, 1892):--

Until the schism arose, we had every prospect of a majority
approaching those of 1868 and 1880. With the death of Mr. Parnell
it was supposed that it must perforce close. But this expectation
has been disappointed. The existence and working of it have to no
small extent puzzled and bewildered the English people. They
cannot comprehend how a quarrel, to them utterly unintelligible
(some even think it discreditable), should be allowed to divide
the host in the face of the enemy; and their unity and zeal have
been deadened in proportion. Herein we see the main cause why our
majority is not more than double what it actually numbers, and the
difference between these two scales of majority represents, as I
apprehend, the difference between power to carry the bill as the
Church and Land bills were carried into law, and the default of
such power. The main mischief has already been done; but it
receives additional confirmation with the lapse of every week or
month.

In forming his fourth administration Mr. Gladstone