involve decisive
abstention at the polls on the day when Irish policy could once more be
submitted to the electors of Great Britain? At the best the standing
difficulties even to sanguine eyes, and under circumstances that had
seemed so promising, were still formidable. What chance was there if this
new burden were superadded? Only one conclusion was possible upon the
state of facts, and even those among persons responsible for this decision
who were most earnestly concerned in the success of the Irish policy,
reviewing all the circumstances of the dilemma, deliberately hold to this
day that though a catastrophe followed, a worse catastrophe was avoided.
It is one of the commonest of all secrets of cheap misjudgment in human
affairs, to start by assuming that there is always some good way out of a
bad case. Alas for us all, this is not so. Situations arise alike (M154)
for individuals, for parties, and for states, from which no good way out
exists, but only choice between bad way and worse. Here was one of those
situations. The mischiefs that followed the course actually taken, we see;
then, as is the wont of human kind, we ignore the mischiefs that as surely
awaited any other.

Mr. Gladstone always steadfastly resisted every call to express an opinion
of his own that the delinquency itself had made Mr. Parnell unfit and
impossible. It was vain to tell him that the party would expect such a
declaration, or that his reputation required that he should found his
action on moral censure all his own. "What!" he cried, "because a man is
what is called leader of a party, does that constitute him a censor and a
judge of faith and morals? I will not accept it. It would make life
intolerable." He adhered tenaciously to political ground. "I have been for
four years," Mr. Gladstone justly argued, "endeavouring to persuade voters
to support Irish autonomy. Now the voter says to me, 'If a certain thing
happens--namely, the retention of the Irish leadership in its present
hands--I will not support Irish autonomy.' How can I go on with the work?
We laboriously rolled the great stone up to the top of the hill, and now
it topples down to the bottom again, unless Mr. Parnell sees fit to go."
From the point of view of Irish policy this was absolutely unanswerable.
It would have been just as unanswerable, even if all the dire confusion
that afterwards came to pass had then been actually in sight. Its force
was wholly independent, and necessa