was to have the power of vetoing the legislative measures of the new body, a form of jurisdiction analogous to the old Royal Veto, whilst they were possibly to be subject to the veto of the British Ministry. The English Privy Council, too, was to be empowered to declare Acts of the Irish Parliament void, if in excess of the constitutional rights of the latter, but, on the other hand, large powers were granted to the new legislature, which was to be able to enact and repeal laws, to pass resolutions, and practically to appoint and control the Irish Executive. Judges and the Royal Irish Constabulary force were to continue for a time under Imperial service, but power was to be given to the new Irish Parliament to organize a civil police, if necessary.

In regard to the financial clauses of the Bill, Ireland was to contribute nearly one-fifteenth instead of one-twelfth, or not far from 7 per cent. to the general expenditure of the Empire; that is to say, a sum of about three and a quarter millions sterling, with a temporary addition of one million; and the whole revenue of Ireland was to filter through the hands of a high Imperial official and to be employed in satisfying the claims of the British Treasury to the amount of about four millions before the Irish. Treasury could receive a penny of it. Finally-and this was the signal difference between the present Bill and Gladstone's later proposal-no provision was made for the real representation of Ireland in the Imperial Parliament, although the latter was to have the power of taxation, and to retain, probably, a nominal supremacy over the Irish Parliament in consideration of its Imperial character.1

Much eloquence was displayed during the debates on this measure. On the second reading Thomas Sexton delivered a speech which Gladstone declared to be the most eloquent he had heard in a generation of great speakers. Lord Hartington moved the rejection of the Bill on the second reading. On the first reading Chamberlain had advocated a Federation Bill, but on the second reading he urged that the relations between Great Britain and Ireland should be analogous to those between the provincial legislatures and the Dominion Parliament of Canada. Parnell also required certain modifications in the shape of a large decrease in the fraction of contribution, due representation for the minority, and a device for preventing ill-considered legislation, the veto of the first order being likely to lead only to obstruction. The Radical opponents of the Bill, headed by Chamberlain, demanded various amendments, namely, the retention of the Irish members, a definite declaration of the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, a separate assembly for Ulster, and the abolition of restrictive devices for the representation of minorities. In fact, the progress of the Bill was 1 Appendix XCI, extract from speech by W. E. Gladstone.

hopeless in the face of this opposition. Gladstone therefore suggested two methods of procedure--either to hang the Bill up after a second reading and defer the Committee till the autumn, or prorogue and introduce the Bill afresh with its amendments in October. The Cabinet was in favour of the latter course, but Parnell and the Opposition were against it. On May 10 the Bill had been brought up for second reading, and Lord Hartington had moved its rejection in a weighty speech. On the 12th fifty-two Liberal and Radical members met Chamberlain to concert resistance and to request him to negotiate with Gladstone no longer. On May 14 sixty-four members, thirtytwo of whom had been at the meeting of the 12th, assembled at Devonshire House. On the 18th Hartington had made a declaration at Bradford which gave the public a premonition of which way the majority in the House would go. On May 22 the National Liberal Union was formed. On the 27th Gladstone called a meeting of Liberal members at the Foreign Office, and about 260 attended. He said he merely wanted the second reading passed in order to establish the principle of the measure, but that it would be proceeded with no further that session, and that a vote given for the second reading would not tie any member's hands in respect of the Land Purchase Bill. This manœuvre of Gladstone's was attacked in the House next day and exposed by the Opposition. The next move was the calling of a meeting by Chamberlain of the dissentients to the Bill in order to discuss the situation. The meeting was held on May 31, and the scale was turned by a letter from John Bright which was laid before it, condemning the measure on the ground of his belief that a United Parliament would be more just to all classes in Ireland than a Parliament sitting in Dublin, but advising each member to vote according to his conscience. This decided the fate of the Bill, which was defeated on the morning of June the 8th by three hundred and forty-three to three hundred and thirteen, ninety-three Liberals voting against it.

A Land Purchase Bill, which aimed at the expropriation of the Irish landed gentry, had also been introduced by Gladstone on April 16, 1886. Various schemes of land purchase were before the country, the ablest of which perhaps had been proposed that year in The Economist by Robert Giffen. Giffen's plan was that the Government should buy out every landlord in Ireland, giving him consols at par, equal in nominal amount to twenty years' purchase of the existing judicial rents. That the land should be given free to the existing occupier, subject only to a rent charge of one-half or two-thirds of the judicial rent his landlord was then receiving, payable to the new local authorities in Ireland, and that the Imperial Exchequer should be relieved of all payments then made out of it in connection with the

Local Government of Ireland. In fact, the cost of Local Government in Ireland was to be defrayed out of Irish resources, and the rent of Ireland was to be handed over to the Irish local authorities for the purpose.1

Gladstone had declared the total land of Ireland to be worth three hundred millions sterling, and the rented land, which was the subject of the Bill, only one hundred and thirteen millions, and he announced that every Irish landlord who desired to sell his lands to the State would be able to do so, the purchase money being made available within that limit. Only fifty out of the hundred and thirteen millions, however, were to be forthcoming in the first instance, the remainder being left to the generosity of future Parliaments. No landlord was to be compelled to part with a single acre, but, in the event of his deciding to sell his rented lands to the State, he was to receive from the fund set apart for the purpose, after certain deductions, a sum equivalent to twenty years' purchase of the net rental. The Irish Parliament was to create a "State Authority" to purchase such holdings, and in a few cases to become their owner, but the lands in the great majority of cases were to be made over to the tenant occupiers, who, instead of the former rents, were to pay the purchase-money back at the rate of four per cent. per annum, whilst the sums accumulating by these means were to form a security for the advance made by the State to the landlords. A Receiver-General was also to be appointed, under British; authority, to receive the rent and revenues of Ireland while the scheme was in operation. The Bill was not a statesmanlike measure, and had many of the features of later land legislation, for, had it been passed, a spirit of animosity would have inevitably arisen between the debtors of the State and the tenants of the non-selling landlords, and given rise, as in after years, to the demand for "compulsory purchase." Gladstone, however, had intended it as an accompaniment to his Home Rule Bill, and on the defeat of the more important measure it was consequently dropped.

Both Bills had thus been rejected and Ireland looked on with comparative indifference. She had no burning desire for a political revolution of this character. What she wanted was the reform of her agrarian and municipal grievances, and her apathy, so often fatal on previous occasions to the schemes of heedless innovators, distressed the partisans of disorder but caused no surprise to the readers of her history.

Appendix XCIA, extract from speech by Joseph Chamberlain.

CHAPTER XVII

THE FALL OF PARNELL AND THE REJECTION OF THE SECOND HOME RULE BILL, 1893

"All things have their appointed end, and English dominion over Ireland must come to an end also. And yet the cause is so plain that there is scarcely a man in either country who does not know what it is. We have professed to govern, and we have not governed or tried to govern, except at intervals so brief that our attempts were as if written upon water. We have sought to reconcile the Irish people to their loss of independence by leaving them to licence. There has never been a time since the first conquest when equitable laws, impartially and inexorably administered, would not have given Ireland peace, and with peace prosperity and liberty."-JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE.

"It is difficult for Englishmen to realize how little influence the people in Ireland have in the management of even the smallest of their local affairs, and how constantly the alien race looms before their eyes as the omnipresent controlling power. The Castle, as it is called, is in Ireland synonymous with the Government. Its influence is felt, and constantly felt, in every department of administration, local and central, and it is little wonder that the Irish people should regard the Castle as the embodiment of foreign supremacy. The rulers of the Castle are to them foreign in race or in sympathy, or in both. . . . If the object of the Government were to paralyse local effort, to annihilate local responsibility, and daily to give emphasis to the fact that the whole country is under the domination of an alien race, no system could be devised more likely to secure its object than that now in force in Ireland.”—Joseph CHAMBERLAIN, 1885.

A GENERAL Election followed upon the defeat of the Home Rule Bill of 1886, Gladstone having decided upon dissolution as against resignation, and before the final returns were sent in he resigned. Parnell was opposed to his resignation and wanted Gladstone to attack the proposals of registration reform and dissolve upon this question, but the latter knew that the opinion of the country was against him. Lord Salisbury now succeeded to power with a majority at his back, and the Conservatives, together with those Liberals who had seceded from their old leader on account of his Irish policy, formed the new Unionist party. Parliament met on August 5, 1886, with Sir Michael Hicks-Beach as Secretary for Ireland and Lord Londonderry as Viceroy. A great fall of agricultural values had been taking place, and Parnell brought in a Tenants' Relief Bill to meet the crisis. He proposed to stay evictions for nonpayment of rent until the ability of the tenant to pay was inquired into; a lodgment of 50 per cent. of the rent due to be made to the landlord's credit as an essential condition of

obtaining redress. Judicial rents adjudicated upon since 1881 were to be again revised in the Land Courts on tenants' applications in consequence of continuous depression, and leaseholders were to be admitted to the benefits of the Land Act of 1881. But Parnell's measure was rejected on September 21, 1886, by 297 to 202. The Irish policy of the Government was now divulged. A Commission was appointed by Lord Salisbury to inquire into Ireland's material resources, and another, known as the Cowper Commission, to inquire into the general state of Ireland. It was composed of Lord Cowper, Lord Milltown, an Irish landlord, Sir James Caird, Neligan, a county court judge in Ireland and a landlord, and Thomas Knipe, a Presbyterian farmer of Ulster. The majority of the Commission passed a report in February 1887, blaming the action of the National League, but urging the necessity of some measure to deal with the unprecedented fall of agricultural values, and declaring that the rents fixed in 1881, 1883, 1884 and 1885 were such as no tenants could reasonably be expected to pay under the circumstances.1 The Government also decided to suppress the moonlighters of Kerry by regular forces. At the end of the year Lord Randolph Churchill surprised his friends and delighted his enemies by suddenly resigning on the ground that the Government was in favour of large expenditure, whilst his own conscience told him that retrenchment was absolutely necessary. Salisbury hereupon offered to resign the premiership in favour of Lord Hartington, but the latter declined, and handed back "the poisoned chalice" to the descendant of the Cecils. It was at this time that an attempt was made at what was known as the "Round Table Conference" to re-cement the scattered portions of the Liberal party. Sir William Harcourt, Joseph Chamberlain, Lord Herschell, George Trevelyan and John Morley laid their heads together to this end, and Chamberlain practically assented to the policy of Home Rule. Not long afterwards, however, the latter wrote to the Baptist in favour of Welsh disestablishment, but warned Welshmen that they, the Scotch crofters, and the English labourers would have to go without legislation because three million disaffected Irishmen barred the way. This-the "Round Table Conference "-was the last attempt to set the old Liberal party on its legs again and prevent the consolidation of the Unionists.

In 1887 the agrarian agitation that had slept for a while broke out again, instigated by the wirepullers of the National

1 Appendix XCII, Portion of Report and evidence.

2 Farrer Herschell, first Baron Herschell (1837-1889), created Lord Chancellor of England in Gladstone's Administration in 1886.