ks like a
conflict between justice and wisdom. The sympathy of Americans is mostly
on the side of the "grand old man" in his Herculean task, even while
they admit that self-government in our own large cities is a dismal
failure from the balance of power which is held by foreigners,--by the
Irish in the East, and by the Germans in the West. And those who see the
rapid growth of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States,
especially in those sections of the country where Puritanism once had
complete sway, and the immense political power wielded by Roman Catholic
priests, can understand why the conservative classes of England are
opposed to the recognition of the political rights of a people who might
unite with socialists and radicals in overturning the institutions on
which the glory and prospects of a great nation are believed to be
based. The Catholics in Ireland constitute about seven-eighths of the
population, and English Protestants fear to deliver the thrifty
Protestant minority into the hands of the great majority armed with the
tyrannical possibilities of Home Rule. It is indeed a many-sided and
difficult problem. There are instincts in nations, as among individuals,
which reason fails to overcome, even as there are some subjects in
reference to which experience is a safer guide than genius or logic.

Little by little, however, at each succeeding election the Liberal party
gained strength, not only in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, but even in
England also, and their power in Parliament increased; until, in 1893,
after a long and memorable contest, the Commons passed Mr. Gladstone's
Home Rule bill by a pronounced majority. Then it was thrown out by the
Lords, with very brief consideration. This, and other overrulings of the
Lower House by the Peers, aroused deep feeling throughout the nation. In
March, 1894, the venerable Gladstone, whose impaired hearing and sight
warned him that a man of eighty-five--even though a giant--should no
longer bear the burdens of empire, retired from the premiership, his
last speech being a solemn intimation of the issues that must soon arise
if the House of Lords persisted in obstructing the will of the people,
as expressed in the acts of their immediate representatives in the House
of Commons.

But, whatever the outcome of the Irish question, the claim of William
Ewart Gladstone to a high rank among the ruling statesmen of Modern
Europe cannot be gainsaid. Moreover, as his infl