ty in the country supported, and still supports, Mr.
Gladstone and the policy of Irish self-government. But the dissentient
minority includes many men of influence, and constitutes in the House of
Commons a body of about seventy members, who hold the balance between
parties. For the present they are leagued with the Tory Ministry to
resist Home Rule, and their support insures a parliamentary majority to
that Ministry. But it is, of course, necessary for them to rally to Lord
Salisbury, not only on Irish questions, but on all questions; for, under
our English system, a Ministry defeated on any serious issue is bound to
resign, or dissolve Parliament. Now, to maintain an alliance for a
special purpose, between members of opposite parties, is a hard matter.
Agreement about Ireland does not, of itself, help men to agree about
foreign policy, or bimetallism, or free trade, or changes in land laws,
or ecclesiastical affairs. When these and other grave questions come up
in Parliament, the Tory Ministry and their Liberal allies must, on
every occasion, negotiate a species of concordat, whereby the liberty
of both is fettered. One party may wish to resist innovation, the other
to yield to it, or even to anticipate it. Each is obliged to forego
something in order to humour the other; neither has the pleasure or the
credit of taking a bold line on its own responsibility. There is, no
doubt, less difference between the respective tenets of the great
English parties than there was twenty years ago, when Mr. Disraeli had
not yet completed the education of one party, and economic laws were
still revered by the other. But, besides its tenets, each party has its
tendencies, its sympathies, its moral atmosphere; and these differ so
widely as to make the co-operation of Tories and Liberals constrained
and cumbrous. Moreover, there are the men to be considered, the leaders
on each side, whose jealousies, rivalries, suspicions, personal
incompatibilities, neither old habits of joint action nor corporate
party feeling exist to soften. On the whole, therefore, it is unlikely
that the league of these two parties, united for one question only, and
that a question which will pass into new phases, can be durable. Either
the league will dissolve, or the smaller party will be absorbed into the
larger. In England, as in America, third parties rarely last. The
attraction of the larger mass is irresistible, and when the crisis which
created a split or g