"But neither would the Democratic Parliament in any case have endured it. A new civil war against Ireland seems morally impossible. Therefore Mr. Gladstone is _ruining_ a measure which might have been good, by his preposterous dealing with it. Lord Hartington said (as indeed did John Bright) the very truth, that the Liberal Party cannot so disown its own traditions, and its wisest principles, as to allow an _individual_, however justly honoured, to concoct _secretly from his old and trusted comrades_, a vast, complicated, and far-reaching settlement and make himself sole initiator of it (as _I_ have kept saying, reduce Parliament to a _machine for saying only Yes and No_).... It is a vile degradation of Parliament. But that is only a small part of the infinite blunder. He pretends that everything has been tried and has failed, _except_ what he now proposes.... In 1880 no one forced him to bring in an Irish measure: he chose to do it, _and did it in the worst possible way,_ by treating the Irish members as ENEMIES, and refusing to consult them. [The Scotch members have _never_ been so treated on Scotch questions.] "Down to last September Mr. Gladstone declared that the Irish members were men, who, by a conspiracy of _rapine_, were seeking to _dismember_ the empire. He carried '(?)' against Ireland during his unparalleled supremacy, acts of despotism unequalled in this country, and that, though they _had no tendency to lessen crime_; and he joined them with _imprisonment against Mr. Parnell_. Only his monstrous incompetency to see right and wrong, made his well-intentioned measure all but fruitless. Peel and Wellington did mischief, long since deplored, in teaching the Irish that England cared nothing for justice, but very much indeed for the danger of a new civil war; but now Mr. Gladstone has been teaching them still more effectually. In September last he denounced Parnell and his friends as bent on dismembering the empire, deplored the danger of consulting them, begged for votes to strengthen him _against_ them; but as soon as the country, from various and very just discontent with his WARLIKE POLICY, and his utter neglect of our moral needs, showed in many of the boroughs their deep dissatisfaction, and he found Mr. Parnell _twice as strong_ as in the Old Parliament ... he gave notice that he was ready to capitulate to Mr. Parnell. And he _did_ virtually capitulate; Mr. Parnell _understood_ him, and defeated Lord Salisbury, and Mr. Gladstone in accepting the power _to which Mr. Parnell invited him,_ insulted all his trusting comrades by keeping them in total ignorance of his scheme, while he concocted it by consultation with the very men whom just before he had _maligned_ as conspiring to _break up_ the empire.