a severe Coercion Bill, or the concession of it by
the introduction of a Home Rule Bill. There were some few who suggested,
as a third course, the granting of a limited measure of local
institutions, such as county boards; but most people felt, as did Mr.
Gladstone's Ministry, that this plan would have had most of the dangers
and few of the advantages of either of the two others.

How the Government of Ireland Bill was brought into the House of Commons
on April 8th, amid circumstances of curiosity and excitement
unparalleled since 1832; how, after debates of almost unprecedented
length, it was defeated in June, by a majority of thirty; how the policy
it embodied was brought before the country at the General Election, and
failed to win approval--all this is too well known to need
recapitulation here. But the causes of the disaster have not been well
understood, for it is only now--now, when the smoke of the battle has
cleared away from the field--that these causes have begun to stand
revealed in their true proportions.

Besides some circumstances attending the production of the Bill, to
which I shall refer presently, and which told heavily against it, there
were three feelings which worked upon men's minds, disposing them to
reject it.

The first of these was dislike and fear of the Irish Nationalist
members. In the previous House of Commons this party had been uniformly
and bitterly hostile to the Liberal Government. Measures intended for
the good of Ireland, like the Land Act of 1881, had been ungraciously
received, treated as concessions extorted, for which no thanks were
due--inadequate concessions, which must be made the starting-point for
fresh demands. Obstruction had been freely practised to defeat not only
bills restraining the liberty of the subject in Ireland, but many other
measures. Some few members of the Irish party had systematically sought
to delay all English and Scotch legislation, and, in fact, to bring the
work of Parliament to a dead stop. Much violent language had been used,
even where the provocation was slight. The outbreaks of crime which had
repeatedly occurred in Ireland had been, not, indeed, defended, but so
often passed over in silence by Nationalist speakers, that English
opinion was inclined to hold them practically responsible for disorders
which, so it was thought, they had neither wished nor tried to prevent.
(I am, of course, expressing no opinion as to the justice of this view,
no