called a policy, then, thank God, the Conservative party have no
policy."

Within a few months of the delivery of that speech a Conservative
Government was in office, with Lord Randolph Churchill as its leader in
the House of Commons; and one of the first acts of the new leader was to
separate himself ostentatiously from the Irish policy of Lord Spencer
and from the policy of coercion in general. Lord Randolph Churchill, as
the organ of the Government in the House of Commons, repudiated in
scornful language any atom of sympathy with the policy pursued by Lord
Spencer in Ireland; and Lord Carnarvon, the new Viceroy, declared that
"the era of coercion" was past, and that the Conservative Government
intended to govern Ireland by the ordinary law. Lord Carnarvon, in
addition, and very much to his credit, sought and obtained an interview
with Mr. Parnell, and discussed with him, in sympathetic language, the
question of Home Rule. In his own explanation of this interview Lord
Carnarvon admitted that he desired to see established in Ireland some
form of self-government which would satisfy "the national sentiment."

It is idle, therefore, to assert that the question of Home Rule for
Ireland, in some form or other, was sprung on the country as a surprise
by Mr. Gladstone in the beginning of 1886. The question was brought
prominently before the public in the General Election of 1885 as one
that must be faced in the new Parliament. All parties were committed to
that policy, and the only difference was as to the character and limits
of the measure of self-government to be granted to Ireland; whether it
was to be large enough to satisfy "the national sentiment," as Lord
Carnarvon, Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Gladstone, and others desired; or
whether it was to consist only of a system of county boards under the
control of a reformed Dublin Castle. There was a general agreement that
the grant to Ireland of electoral equality with England necessitated
equality of political treatment, and that, above all things, there was
to be no renewal of the stale policy of Coercion until the Irish people
had got an opportunity of proving or disproving their fitness for
self-government, unless, indeed, there should happen to be a
recrudescence of crime which would render exceptional legislation
necessary. The election of 1886 turned almost entirely on the question
of Irish government, and it is not too much to say that Conservatives
and Liberal Unionists