So far as the vote in the House was concerned, the Nationalists wanted little temptation to turn out a Coercionist Liberal Administration. They had long been looking for an opportunity of revenge. They shared the general expectation that the lowering of the franchise would give a great advantage to the Liberal party. Their interest was clearly, and their intention was notoriously, to play for an equalisation in party strength by supporting the weaker side at the dissolution. If the Conservatives would give them any reasonable excuse for preferring them to the Liberal Government, if they would avoid studied causes of offence, the Irish party would be content to support them in the House and to throw their vote--so far as it could be thrown--for the Conservative candidates in the election. On some such tacit understanding as this Lord Salisbury’s first Administration came into power and held sway. Neither party gave away any point of practical importance, or entered into any confidential relationship. Both Tories and Nationalists pursued their own ends. They used each other for their own purposes; and in the end the Conservatives came off the winners. All suggestions of a more definite compact belong to the regions of romance. Within the space of a single year both great English parties were supported by the votes of the Irish members and were to some extent dependent on their good-will. But there was an important difference between the relations which respectively existed. The Conservatives, consciously or unconsciously, used the Irish party. The Liberals, willingly or unwillingly, were used by them. And whereas the former moved on through that association to prosperous years of power, the latter sank into paralysis and decay. But it should not be inferred from these unedifying reflections that Lord Randolph Churchill in his declarations against the re-enactment of the Crimes Act in 1885 was animated solely by a hard desire to effect a political combination. His views on Irish men and Irish matters were very different in character from the general opinion of his party. He knew Ireland well and liked her people. He had been in former days the friend of Mr. Butt. For five years of hard Parliamentary fighting he and his associates had sat in front of the Irish Nationalists, and many a reciprocal service or manœuvre had built up a House of Commons comradeship. ‘You can always trust them,’ he used to say, ‘if you know them and understand them.’ In office or Opposition, in good fortune or defeat, he detested the use of special legislation in Ireland; and, although he remained an unwavering opponent of Repeal, these pages will show that he at least did not approach Irish questions in a spirit of selfish opportunism.