crippling any powers we possess for conferring benefits on the
country to which we belong."

And for fifteen years, in power or in opposition, Mr. Gladstone preached
and acted upon the same doctrine. When the Land League was founded he
denounced it as an organisation whose steps were "dogged with crime,"
and whose march was "through rapine to the dismemberment of the Empire."
The League was finally "proclaimed" by his Government as a criminal
conspiracy and its members, from Mr. Parnell downwards, arrested and
imprisoned without trial as being "reasonably suspected" of criminal
practices.

This continued until in an unfortunate moment for himself Mr. Gladstone
discovered, in November, 1885, that the votes of Mr. Parnell and his
eighty-six colleagues were necessary for his own return to power as
Prime Minister, whereupon he entered into negotiations which resulted,
on the one hand, in his securing the necessary votes, and on the other
in his accepting the principles and the policy of those whom until then
he had denounced and imprisoned as instigators to crime and sedition. He
rightly recognised that there was no half-way house, and that he could
not become a Home Ruler without accepting and defending the actions of
the Home Rulers. He worshipped what he had formerly burnt, and he burned
what he had hitherto worshipped. The result was that for several years
England beheld for the first time the scandalous spectacle of men who
had held high office under the Crown openly defending--and even
instigating--lawlessness and disorder, shielding and excusing criminals,
proved such before the courts, and thwarting, misrepresenting, and
obstructing those whose duty it was to restore order and legality in
Ireland.

Such were the difficulties that confronted Mr. Arthur Balfour as Chief
Secretary for Ireland from 1887 to 1891, difficulties which he
surmounted with such resolution and such statesmanship that he retired
from an office that has been called "the grave of reputations" with a
reputation so much enhanced as to ensure him the leadership of his party
and the gratitude of Irishmen of all classes for generations to come.
And yet his method was a supremely simple one--to reassert the supremacy
of the law, to neglect, almost ostentatiously, all merely political
cries, and to set himself seriously to deal with the real Irish
question, that of conferring some measure of security and prosperity on
a population which over wid