says now what he denied six years ago cannot expect to be believed
on his _ipse dixit_. He must set forth the grounds of his conviction. He
must explain how his views altered, and why reasons which formerly
satisfied him satisfy him no longer. It may be that the Liberal party
have omitted to do this as they ought. Occupied by warm and incessant
discussions, and conscious, I venture to believe, of their own honesty,
few of its members have been at the trouble of showing what were the
causes which modified their views, and what the stages of the process
which carried them from the position of 1880 to that of 1886.

Of that process I shall attempt in the following pages to give a sketch.
Such a sketch, though mainly retrospective, is pertinent to the issues
which now divide the country. It will indicate the origin and the
strength of the chief reasons by which Liberals are now governed. And,
if executed with proper fairness and truth, it may, as a study in
contemporary history, be of some little interest to those who in future
will attempt to understand our present conflict. The causes which
underlie changes of opinion are among the most obscure phenomena in
history, because those who undergo, these changes are often only half
conscious of them, and do not think of recording that which is
imperceptible in its growth, and whose importance is not realized till
it already belongs to the past.

The account which follows is based primarily on my own recollection of
the phases of opinion and feeling through which I myself, and the
friends whom I knew most intimately in the House of Commons, passed
during the Parliament which sat from 1880 till 1885. But I should not
think of giving it to the public if I did not believe that what happened
to our minds happened to many others also, and that the record of our
own slow movement from the position of 1880 to that of 1886 is
substantially a record of the movement of the Liberal party at large. We
were fairly typical members of that party, loyal to our leaders, but
placing the principles for which the Liberal party exists above the
success of the party itself; with our share of prepossessions and
prejudices, yet with reasonably open minds, and (as we believed)
inferior to no other section of the House of Commons in patriotism and
in attachment to the Constitution. I admit frankly that when we entered
Parliament we knew less about the Irish question than we ought to have
known, and tha