nse of pregnant issues, there
was nothing like general concentration on the Irish prospect. The strife
of programmes and the rivalries of leaders were what engrossed the popular
attention. The main body of the British electors were thinking mainly of
promised agrarian booms, fair trade, the church in danger, or some other
of their own domestic affairs.

Few forms of literature or history are so dull as the narrative of
political debates. With a few exceptions, a political speech like the
manna in the wilderness loses its savour on the second day. Three or four
marked utterances of this critical autumn, following all that has been set
forth already, will enable the reader to understand the division of
counsel that prevailed immediately before the great change of policy in
1886, and the various strategic evolutions, masked movements, and play of
mine, sap, and countermine, that led to it. As has just been described,
and with good reason, (M89) for he believed that he had the Irish viceroy
on his side, Mr. Parnell stood inflexible. In his speech of August 24
already mentioned, he had thrown down his gauntlet.

Much the most important answer to the challenge, if we regard the effect
upon subsequent events, was that of Lord Salisbury two months later. To
this I shall have to return. The two liberal statesmen, Lord Hartington
and Mr. Chamberlain, who were most active in this campaign, and whose
activity was well spiced and salted by a lively political antagonism,
agreed in a tolerably stiff negative to the Irish demand. The whig leader
with a slow mind, and the radical leader with a quick mind, on this single
issue of the campaign spoke with one voice. The whig leader(149) thought
Mr. Parnell had made a mistake and ensured his own defeat: he
overestimated his power in Ireland and his power in parliament; the Irish
would not for the sake of this impossible and impracticable undertaking,
forego without duress all the other objects which parliament was ready to
grant them; and it remained to be seen whether he could enforce his iron
discipline upon his eighty or ninety adherents, even if Ireland gave him
so many.

The radical leader was hardly less emphatic, and his utterance was the
more interesting of the two, because until this time Mr. Chamberlain had
been generally taken throughout his parliamentary career as leaning
strongly in the nationalist direction. He had taken a bold and energetic
part in the proceedings that ende