rish autonomy into the
forefront of his address, has been made a common article of charge against
him. As if the view of Irish autonomy now running in his mind were not
dependent on a string of hypotheses. And who can imagine a party leader's
election address that should have run thus?--" If Mr. Parnell returns with
a great majority of members, and if the minority is not weighty enough,
and if the demand is constitutionally framed, and if the Parnellites are
unanimous, then we will try home rule. And this possibility of a
hypothetical experiment is to be the liberal cry with which to go into
battle against Lord Salisbury, who, so far as I can see, is nursing the
idea of the same experiment."

Some weeks later, in speaking to his electors in Midlothian, Mr. Gladstone
instead of minimising magnified the Irish case, pushed it into the very
forefront, not in one speech, but in nearly all; warned his hearers of the
gravity of the questions soon to be raised by it, and assured them that it
would probably throw into the shade the other measures that he had
described as ripe for action. He elaborated a declaration, of which much
was heard for many months and years afterwards. What Ireland, he said, may
deliberately and constitutionally demand, unless it infringes the
principles connected with the honourable maintenance of the unity of the
empire, will be a demand that we are bound at any rate to treat with
careful attention. To stint Ireland in power which might be necessary or
desirable for the management of matters purely Irish, would be a great
error; and if she was so stinted, the end that any such measure might
contemplate could not be attained. Then came the memorable appeal: "Apart
from the term of whig and tory, there is one thing I will say and will
endeavour to impress upon you, and it is this. It will be a vital danger
to the country and to the empire, if at a time when a demand from Ireland
for larger powers of self-government is to be dealt with, there is not in
parliament a party totally independent of the Irish vote."(154) Loud and
long sustained have been the reverberations of this clanging sentence. It
was no mere passing dictum. Mr. Gladstone himself insisted upon the same
position again and again, that "for a government in a minority to deal
with the Irish question would not be safe." This view, propounded in his
first speech, was expanded in his second. There he deliberately set out
that the urgent expediency