without giving the Irish expressly to
know it might be decided mainly by their wish.

3. I think there is no doubt Ulster would be able to take care of
itself in respect to education, but a question arises and forms, I
think, the most difficult part of the whole subject, whether some
defensive provisions for the owners of land and property should
not be considered.

4. It is evident you have given the subject much thought, and my
sympathy goes largely to your details as well as your principle.
But considering the danger of placing confidence in the leaders of
the national party at the present moment, and the decided
disposition they have shown to raise their terms on any favourable
indication, I would beg you to consider further whether you should
_bind_ yourself at present to any details, or go beyond general
indications. If you say in terms (and this I do not dissuade) that
you are ready to consider the question whether they can have a
legislature for all questions not Imperial, this will be a great
step in advance; and anything you may say beyond it, I should like
to see veiled in language not such as to commit you.

The reader who is now acquainted with Mr. Gladstone's strong support of
the Chamberlain plan in 1885, and with the bias already disclosed, knows
in what direction the main current of his thought must have been setting.
The position taken in 1885 was in entire harmony with all these
premonitory notes. Subject, said Mr. Gladstone, to the supremacy of the
crown, the unity of the empire, and all the authority of parliament
necessary for the conservation of that unity, every grant to portions of
the country of enlarged powers for the management of their own affairs,
was not a source of danger, but a means of averting it. "As to the
legislative union, I believe history and posterity will consign to
disgrace the name and memory of every man, be he who he may, and on
whichever side of the Channel he may dwell, that having the power to aid
in an equitable settlement between Ireland and Great Britain, shall use
that power not to aid, but to prevent or retard it."(153) These and all
the other large and profuse sentences of the Midlothian address were
undoubtedly open to more than one construction, and they either admitted
or excluded home rule, as might happen. The fact that, though it was
running so freely in his own mind, he did not put I