ader on the urgency of the Irish question, and declared
that it would be a public calamity if this great subject should fall
into lines of party conflict. If Salisbury would bring forward a
proposal for settling the whole question of future government in Ireland
he would treat it in the same spirit as that which he had shown in the
matters of Afghanistan and the Balkans, and he illustrated the
advantages which such a spirit of concession could produce by the
conferences on the Reform Bill, and the fact that the existing
Conservative ministry had been maintained in office by Liberal
forbearance. "His hypocrisy," wrote a minister to whom this letter had
been shown, "makes me sick." In this connection a letter from Lord
Randolph Churchill to Lord Salisbury, written on the following day, is
of interest:--

"Labouchere came to see me this morning.... He proceeded to tell me
that, on Sunday week last, Lord Carnarvon had met Justin MacCarthy and
had confided to him that he was in favour of Home Rule in some shape,
but that his colleagues and his party were not ready, and asked whether
Justin MacCarthy's party would agree to an inquiry which he thought
there was a chance of the Government agreeing to, and which would
educate his colleagues and his party if granted and carried through. I
was consternated, but replied that such a statement was an obvious lie,
but, between ourselves, I fear it is not, perhaps not even an
exaggeration or a misrepresentation. Justin MacCarthy is on the staff of
the _Daily News_, Labouchere is one of the proprietors, and I cannot
imagine any motive for his inventing such a statement. If it is true
Lord Carnarvon has played the devil."[21]

With regard to the overtures which Mr. Gladstone had made, for which
precedents in plenty were supplied by the repeal of the Test Act in
1828, Catholic Emancipation in 1829, the Repeal of the Corn Laws in
1848, and the extension of the franchise in 1867, Lord Salisbury saw in
it only anxiety to take office on the part of his great opponent, and
prophesied that if his hunger were not prematurely gratified he would be
forced into some line of conduct which would be discreditable to him and
disastrous, and when the Liberal leader on the 23rd again pressed for a
definite answer to his approaches he was refused a communication of
views.

"Thus idly," says Mr. Winston Churchill, "drifted away what was perhaps
the best hope of the settlement of Ireland which that gener