sign once begun should be fought. He took few secondary
arguments, but laboured only to hold up to men's imagination, and to burn
into their understanding, the lines of central policy, the shame and
dishonour from which it would relieve us, the new life with which it would
inspire Ireland, the ease that it would bring to parliament in England.
His tenacity, his force and resource, were inexhaustible. He was harassed
on every side. The Irish leader pressed him hard upon finance. Old
adherents urged concession about exclusion. The radicals disliked the two
orders. Minor points for consideration in committee rained in upon him, as
being good reasons for altering the bill before it came in sight of
committee. Not a single constructive proposal made any way in the course
of the debate. All was critical and negative. Mr. Gladstone's grasp was
unshaken, and though he saw remote bearings and interdependent
consequences where others supposed all to be plain sailing, yet if the
principle were only saved he professed infinite pliancy. He protested that
there ought to be no stereotyping of our minds against modifications, and
that the widest possible variety of modes of action should be kept open;
and he "hammered hard at his head," as he put it, to see what could be
worked out in the way of admitting Irish members without danger, and
without intolerable inconvenience. If anybody considered, he continued to
repeat in endless forms, that there was another set of provisions by which
better and fuller effect could be given to the principle of the bill, they
were free to displace all the particulars that hindered this better and
fuller effect being given to the principle.(209)

III

At the beginning of May the unionist computation was that 119 on the
ministerial side of the House had, with or without qualification, promised
to vote against the second reading. Of these, 70 had publicly committed
themselves, and 23 more were supposed to be absolutely certain. If the
whole House voted, this estimate of 93 would give a majority of 17 against
the bill.(210) The leader of the radical wing, however, reckoned that 55
out of the 119 would vote with him for the second reading, if he
pronounced the ministerial amendments of the bill satisfactory. The
amendments demanded were the retention of the Irish members, a definite
declaration of the supremacy of the imperial parliament, a separate
assembly for Ulster, and the abolition of the restric