d, and that the bill has failed." As he
interpreted it afterwards, there was no doubt that in one sense the Land
Act tended to accelerate a crisis in Ireland, for it brought to a head the
affairs of the party connected with the land league. It made it almost a
necessity for that party either to advance or to recede. They chose the
desperate course. At the same date, he wrote in a letter to Lord
Granville:--

With respect to Parnellism, I should not propose to do more than a
severe and strong denunciation of it by severing him altogether
from the Irish people and the mass of the Irish members, and by
saying that home rule has for one of its aims local government--an
excellent thing to which I would affix no limits except the
supremacy of the imperial parliament, and the rights of all parts
of the country to claim whatever might be accorded to Ireland.
This is only a repetition of what I have often said before, and I
have nothing to add or enlarge. But I have the fear that when the
occasion for action comes, which will not be in my time, many
liberals may perhaps hang back and may cause further trouble.

In view of what was to come four years later, one of his letters to
Forster is interesting (April 12, 1882), among other reasons as
illustrating the depth to which the essence of political liberalism had
now penetrated Mr. Gladstone's mind:--

1. About local government for Ireland, the ideas which more and
more establish themselves in my mind are such as these.

(1.) Until we have seriously responsible bodies to deal with us in
Ireland, every plan we frame comes to Irishmen, say what we may,
as an English plan. As such it is probably condemned. At best it
is a one-sided bargain, which binds us, not them.

(2.) If your excellent plans for obtaining local aid towards the
execution of the law break down, it will be on account of this
miserable and almost total want of the sense of responsibility for
the public good and public peace in Ireland; and this
responsibility we cannot create except through local
self-government.

(3.) If we say we must postpone the question till the state of the
country is more fit for it, I should answer that the least danger
is in going forward at once. It is liberty alone which fits men
for liberty. This proposition, like every other in politics, has
its bounds; but it is f