factor in politics. Its first
conspicuous manifestation was in the defeat of the Government by the
allied forces on the Affirmation Bill, when the least respectable
privates in both armies vied with one another in boisterous rejoicings
over the announcement of numbers in the division. I do not refer to this
as ground for complaint. It was in the course of our usual political
warfare that two groups, each hating and fearing the Ministry, should
unite to displace it. But we now saw what power the Irish section must
exert when it came to hold the balance of numbers in the House. Till
this division, the Government had commanded a majority of the whole
House. This would probably not outlast a dissolution. What then? Could
the two English parties, differing so profoundly from one another,
combine against the third party? Evidently not. We must, therefore, look
forward to unstable Governments, if not to a total dislocation of our
Parliamentary system.

Session of 1884.--I pass over the minor incidents of this year,
including the continued neglect of remedial legislation for Ireland to
dwell on its dominant and most impressive lesson. It was the year of the
Franchise Bill, which, as regards Ireland, worked an extension, not
merely of the county but also of the borough franchise, and produced,
owing to the economic condition of the humbler classes in that country,
a far more extensive change than in England or Scotland. When the Bill
was introduced the question at once arose--Should Ireland be included?

There were two ways of treating Ireland between which Parliament had to
choose.

One was to leave her out of the Bill, on the ground that the masses of
her population could not be trusted with the franchise, as being
ignorant, sympathetic to crime, hostile to the English Government. This
course was the logical concomitant of exceptional coercive legislation,
such as had been passed in 1881 and 1882. It was quite compatible with
generous remedial legislation. But it placed Ireland in an unequal and
lower position, treating her, as the Coercion Acts did, as a dependent
country, inhabited by a population unfit for the same measure of power
which the inhabitants of Britain might receive.

The other course was to bestow on Ireland the same extended franchise
which the English county occupiers were to receive, applying the
principle of equality, and disregarding the obvious consequences. These
consequences were both practical and