the new policy was launched, and the fact that as
coming from one party it was sure beforehand of the hostility of the
other, no surprise can be felt at its fate. Those who, in England, now
look back over the spring and summer of 1886 are rather surprised that
it should come so near succeeding. To have been rejected by a majority
of only thirty in Parliament, and of little over ten per cent. of the
total number of electors who voted at the general election, is a defeat
far less severe than any one who knew England would have predicted.

That the decision of the country is regarded by nobody as a final
decision goes without saying. It was not regarded as final, even in the
first weeks after it was given. This was not because the majority was
comparatively small, for a smaller majority the other way would have
been conclusive. It is because the country had not time enough for full
consideration and deliberate judgment. The Bill was brought in on April
14th, the elections began on July 1st; no one can say what might have
been the result of a long discussion, during which the first feelings of
alarm (for alarm there was) might have worn off. And the decision is
without finality, also, because the decision of the country was merely
against the particular plan proposed by Mr. Gladstone, and not in favour
of any alternative plan for dealing with Ireland, most certainly not for
the coercive method which has since been adopted. One particular
solution of the Irish problem was refused. The problem still stands
confronting us, and when other modes of solving it have been in turn
rejected, the country may come back to this mode.

We may now turn from the past to the future. Yet the account which has
been given of the feelings and ideas arrayed against the Bill does not
wholly belong to the past. They are the feelings to which the opponents
of any plan of self-government for Ireland still appeal, and which will
have to be removed or softened down before it can be accepted by the
English. In particular, the probability of separation, and the supposed
dangers to the Protestants and the landlords from an Irish Parliament,
will continue to form the themes of controversy so long as the question
remains unsettled.

What are the prospects of its settlement? What is the position which it
now occupies? How has it affected the current politics of England?

It broke up the Liberal party in Parliament. The vast numerical majority
of that par