tice, police, and
prisons would remain with the executive. This board would not be directly
elective by the whole Irish people; it would be chosen by the
representative county boards. Property, moreover, should have a
representation upon it distinct from numbers. This plan, "first made known
to Mr. Gladstone by Mr. Chamberlain," would, he believed, be supported by
six out of the eight Commons ministers. But a larger number of ministers
were not prepared to agree to any plan involving the principle of an
elective central board as the policy of the cabinet. On account of this
preliminary bar, the particular provisions of the policy of a central
board were not discussed.

All this, however, was for the moment retrospective and historic, because
a fortnight before the letter was written, the policy of the central
board, of which Mr. Gladstone so decisively approved, had been killed. A
committee of the cabinet was appointed to consider it; some remained
stubbornly opposed; as the discussion went on, some changed their minds
and, having resisted, at last inclined to acquiesce. Ministers were aware
from the correspondence of one of them with an eminent third person, that
Mr. Parnell approved the scheme, and in consideration of it would even not
oppose a very limited Crimes bill. This, however, was no temptation to all
of them; perhaps it had the contrary effect. When it came to the full
cabinet, it could not be carried. All the peers except Lord Granville were
against it. All the Commoners except Lord Hartington were for it. As the
cabinet broke up (May 9), the prime minister said to one colleague, "Ah,
they will rue this day"; and to another, "Within six years, if it please
God to spare their lives, they will be repenting in sackcloth and ashes."
Later in the day he wrote to one of them, "The division of opinion in the
cabinet on the subject of local government with a central board for
Ireland was so marked, and if I may use the expression, so diametrical,
that I dismissed the subject from my mind, and sorrowfully accepted the
negative of what was either a majority, or a moiety of the entire
cabinet."

This decision, more profoundly critical than anybody excepting Mr.
Gladstone and perhaps Mr. Chamberlain seemed to be aware, left all
existing difficulties as acute as ever. In the middle of May things looked
very black. The scheme for a central board was dead, though, wrote Mr.
Gladstone to the viceroy, "for the present only.