ught we to join issue among
ourselves, if we have a choice, unless and until we are called
upon to consider whether or not to take the government. I for one
will have nothing to do with ruining the party if I can avoid it.

This letter discloses with precision the critical state of facts on the
eve of action being taken. Issue was not directly joined with ministers on
home rule; no choice was found to exist as to taking the government; and
this brought deep and long-standing diversities among the liberal leaders
to the issue that Mr. Gladstone had strenuously laboured to avoid from the
beginning of 1885 to the end.

IV

The Irish paragraphs in the speech from the throne (January 21, 1886) were
abstract, hypothetical, and vague. The sovereign was made to say that
during the past year there had been no marked increase of serious crime,
but there was in many places a concerted resistance to the enforcement of
legal obligations, and the practice of intimidation continued to exist.
"If," the speech went on, "as my information leads me to apprehend, the
existing provisions of the law should prove to be inadequate to cope with
these growing evils, I look with confidence to your willingness to invest
my government with all necessary powers." There was also an abstract
paragraph about the legislative union between the two islands.

In a fragment composed in the autumn of 1897, Mr. Gladstone has described
the anxiety with which he watched the course of proceedings on the
Address:--

I had no means of forming an estimate how far the bulk of the
liberal party could be relied on to support a measure of home
rule, which should constitute an Irish parliament subject to the
supremacy of the parliament at Westminster. I was not sanguine on
this head. Even in the month of December, when rumours of my
intentions were afloat, I found how little I could reckon on a
general support. Under the circumstances I certainly took upon
myself a grave responsibility. I attached value to the acts and
language of Lord Carnarvon, and the other favourable
manifestations. Subsequently we had but too much evidence of a
deliberate intention to deceive the Irish, with a view to their
support at the election. But in the actual circumstances I thought
it my duty to encourage the government of Lord Salisbury to settle
the Irish question, so far as I could do this by promises of m