ar safer than the counter doctrine, wait
till they are fit.

(4.) In truth I should say (differing perhaps from many), that for
the Ireland of to-day, the first question is the rectification of
the relations between landlord and tenant, which happily is going
on; the next is to relieve Great Britain from the enormous weight
of the government of Ireland unaided by the people, and from the
hopeless contradiction in which we stand while we give a
parliamentary representation, hardly effective for anything but
mischief without the local institutions of self-government which
it presupposes, and on which alone it can have a sound and healthy
basis.

We have before us in administration, he wrote to Forster in September--

a problem not less delicate and arduous than the problem of
legislation with which we have lately had to deal in parliament.
Of the leaders, the officials, the skeleton of the land league I
have no hope whatever. The better the prospects of the Land Act
with their adherents outside the circle of wire-pullers, and with
the Irish people, the more bitter will be their hatred, and the
more sure they will be to go as far as fear of the people will
allow them in keeping up the agitation, which they cannot afford
to part with on account of their ulterior ends. All we can do is
to turn more and more the masses of their followers, to fine them
down by good laws and good government, and it is in this view that
the question of judicious releases from prison, should improving
statistics of crime encourage it, may become one of early
importance.

VI

It was in the autumn of 1881 that Mr. Gladstone visited Leeds, in payment
of the debt of gratitude due for his triumphant return in the general
election of the year before. This progress extended over four days, and
almost surpassed in magnitude and fervour any of his experiences in other
parts of the kingdom. We have an interesting glimpse of the physical
effort of such experiences in a couple of his letters written to Mr.
Kitson, who with immense labour and spirit had organized this severe if
glorious enterprise:--

_Hawarden Castle, Sept. 28, 1881._--I thank you for the very clear
and careful account of the proposed proceedings at Leeds. It lacks
as yet that _rough_ statement of numbers at each meeting, which is
requisite to enable me to u