enerated a new group has passed, or the opinion the
new group advocates has been either generally discredited or generally
adopted, the small party melts away, its older members disappearing from
public life, its younger ones finding their career in the ranks of one
of the two great standing armies of politics. If the dissentient, or
anti-Home Rule, Liberal party lives till the next general election, it
cannot live longer, for at that election it will be ground to powder
between the upper and nether millstones of the regular Liberals and the
regular Tories.

The Irish struggle of 1886 has had another momentous consequence. It
has brought the Nationalist or Parnellite party into friendly relations
with the mass of English Liberals. When the Home Rule party was founded
by Mr. Butt, some fifteen years ago, it had more in common with the
Liberal than with the Tory party. But as it demanded what both English
parties were then resolved to refuse, it was forced into antagonism to
both; and from 1877 onward (Mr. Butt being then dead) the antagonism
became bitter, and, of course, specially bitter as toward the statesmen
in power, because it was they who continued to refuse what the
Nationalists sought. Mr. Parnell has always stated, with perfect
candour, that he and his friends must fight for their own hand
unhampered by English alliances, and getting the most they could for
Ireland from the weakness of either English party. This position they
still retain. If the Tory party will give them Home Rule, they will help
the Tory party. However, as the Tory party has gained office by opposing
Home Rule, this contingency may seem not to lie within the immediate
future. On the other hand, the Gladstonian Liberals have lost office for
their advocacy of Home Rule, and now stand pledged to maintain the
policy they have proclaimed. The Nationalists have, therefore, for the
first time since the days immediately following the Union of A.D. 1800
(a measure which the Whigs of those days resisted), a great English
party admitting the justice of their claim, and inviting them to agitate
for it by purely constitutional methods. For such an alliance the
English Liberals are hotly reproached, both by the Tories and by the
dissentients who follow Lord Harrington and Mr. Chamberlain. They are
accused of disloyalty to England. The past acts and words of the
Nationalists are thrown in their teeth, and they are told that in
supporting the Irish claim the