our and astuteness. But the phrases of the manifesto were the least
important part of it. It was enough that the hard word was passed. Some
estimated the loss to the liberal party in this island at twenty seats,
others at forty. Whether twenty or forty, these lost seats made a fatal
difference in the division on the Irish bill a few months later, and when
(M92) that day had come and gone, Mr. Parnell sometimes ruefully asked
himself whether the tactics of the electoral manifesto were not on the
whole a mistake. But this was not all and was not the worst of it. The
Irish manifesto became a fiery element in a sharp electioneering war, and
threw the liberals in all constituencies where there was an Irish vote
into a direct and angry antagonism to the Irish cause and its leaders;
passions were roused, and things were said about Irishmen that could not
at once be forgotten; and the great task of conversion in 1886, difficult
in any case, was made a thousand times more difficult still by the
arguments and antipathies of the electoral battle of 1885. Meanwhile it
was for the moment, and for the purposes of the moment, a striking
success.

Chapter II. The Polls In 1885. (1885)

I would say that civil liberty can have no security without
political power.--C. J. FOX.

I

The election ran a chequered course (Nov. 23-Dec. 19). It was the first
trial of the whole body of male householders, and it was the first trial
of the system of single-member districts. This is not the place for a
discussion of the change of electoral area. As a scheme for securing
representation of minorities it proved of little efficacy, and many
believe that the substitution of a smaller constituency for a larger one
has tended to slacken political interest, and to narrow political
judgment. Meanwhile some of those who were most deeply concerned in
establishing the new plan, were confident that an overwhelming liberal
triumph would be the result. Many of their opponents took the same view,
and were in despair. A liberal met a tory minister on the steps of a club
in Pall Mall, as they were both going to the country for their elections.
"I suppose," said the tory, "we are out for twenty years to come." _O
pectora caeca!_ He has been in office for nearly fifteen of the eighteen
years since. In September one of the most authoritative liberal experts
did not see how the tories were to have more than 210 out of the 670
seats, including the