Although this sketch is in the main a record of Parliamentary opinion, I ought not to pass over the influence which the study of their constituents' ideas exerted upon members for the larger towns. We found the vast bulk of our supporters--English supporters, for after 1882 it was understood that the Irish voters were our enemies--sympathetic with the Irish people. They knew and thought little about Home Rule, believing that their member understood that question better than they did, and willing, so long as he was sound on English issues, to trust him. But they pitied Irish tenants, and condemned Irish landlords. Though they acquiesced in a Coercion Bill when proposed by a Liberal Cabinet, because they concluded that nothing less than necessity would lead such a Cabinet to propose one, they so much disliked any exceptional or repressive legislation that it was plain they would not long tolerate it. Any popular leader denouncing coercion was certain to have the sentiment of the English masses with him, while as to suspending Irish representation or carrying out consistently the policy of treating Ireland as a subject country, there was no chance in the world of their approval. Those of us, therefore, who represented large working-class constituencies became convinced that the solution of the Irish problem must be sought in conciliation and self-government, if only because the other solution, Crown Colony Government, was utterly repugnant to the English masses, in whom the Franchise Bill of 1884, completing that of 1867, had vested political supremacy.[5]