nd for a plan on the lines of Canada. This he
followed up, also in public, by the admission that of course the Irish
legislature must be allowed to organise their own form of executive
government, either by an imitation on a small scale of all that goes on at
Westminster and Whitehall, or in whatever other shape they might think
proper.(221) To assent to an Irish legislature for such affairs as
parliament might determine to be distinctively Irish, with an executive
responsible to it, was to accept the party credo on the subject. Then the
surface became mysteriously ruffled. Language was used by some of the
plenipotentiaries in public, of which each side in turn complained as
inconsistent with conciliatory negotiation in private. At last on the very
day on which the provisional result of the conference was laid before Mr.
Gladstone, there appeared in a print called the _Baptist_(222) an article
from Mr. Chamberlain, containing an ardent plea for the disestablishment
of the Welsh church, but warning the Welshmen that they and the Scotch
crofters and the English labourers, thirty-two millions of people, must
all go without much-needed, legislation because three millions were
disloyal, while nearly six hundred members of parliament would be reduced
to forced inactivity, because some eighty delegates, representing the
policy and receiving the pay of the Chicago convention, were determined to
obstruct all business until their demands had been conceded. Men naturally
asked what was the use of continuing a discussion, when one party to it
was attacking in this peremptory fashion the very persons and the policy
that in private he was supposed to accept. Mr. Gladstone showed no
implacability. Viewing the actual character of the _Baptist_ letter, he
said to Sir W. Harcourt, "I am inclined to think we can hardly do more
now, than to say we fear it has interposed an unexpected obstacle in the
way of any attempt at this moment to sum up the result of your
communications, which we should otherwise hopefully have done; but on the
other hand we are unwilling that so much ground apparently gained should
be lost, that a little time may soften or remove the present ruffling of
the surface, and that we are quite willing that the subject should stand
over for resumption at a convenient season."

The resumption never happened. Two or three weeks later, Mr. Chamberlain
announced that he did not intend to return to the round table.(223) No
other