ful Government at that time in office from fulfilling its
pledges that not only was no Bill to that effect introduced, but,
further, in April, 1883, a Bill to establish elective County Councils,
which was introduced by the Irish Party, was thrown out in the House of
Commons by 231 votes to 58. In his famous speech at Newport in 1885,
when the Tories were, as all the world thought, coquetting with Home
Rule, Lord Salisbury declared that of the two, popular local government
would be even more dangerous than Home Rule. He based his view partly on
the difficulty of finding thirty or forty suitable persons in each of
the thirty-two counties to sit on local bodies, which would be greater
than that of finding three or four suitable M.P.s for the same divisions
of the country; but, even more than this, he insisted on the fact that a
local body has more opportunity for inflicting injustice on minorities
than has an authority deriving its sanction and extending its
jurisdiction over a wider area, where, as he declared, "the wisdom of
the several parts of the country will correct the folly or mistakes of
one." In spite of this explicit declaration, when, in the following
year, the Tories had definitely ranged themselves on the side of
Unionism, the alternative policy to the proposals of Mr. Gladstone was
nothing less than the establishment of a system of popular local
government. Speaking with all the premeditation which a full sense of
the importance of the occasion must have demanded, Lord Randolph
Churchill, on a motion for an Address in reply to the Queen's Speech
after the general election of 1886 had resulted in a Unionist victory,
made use of these words in his capacity of leader in the House of
Commons:--

"The great sign posts of our policy are equality, similarity, and, if I
may use such a word, simultaneity of treatment, so far as is practicable
in the development of a genuinely popular system of local government in
all the four countries which form the United Kingdom."

In 1888 this pledge was fulfilled so far as the counties of England and
Wales were concerned, and in regard to those of Scotland in the
following year. When the Irish members, in 1888, introduced an Irish
Local Government Bill, Mr. Arthur Balfour, as Chief Secretary, opposed
it on behalf of the Government, and Lord Randolph Churchill, who at
that time, having "forgotten Goschen," was a private member, gave
further effect to the solemnity of the declara