rulers; and to consider what the amending hand may accomplish. CHAPTER II THE QUESTION OF HOME RULE The question of Home Rule not extinct--The reasons--Butt's scheme of Home Rule--It is denounced and ridiculed by Mr. Gladstone, and defeated in the House of Commons--Death of Butt--The Home Rule movement becomes allied with a foreign conspiracy--Davitt and Parnell--The Land League--Mr. Gladstone's surrender to it--The movement makes no progress in the Parliament of 1880-85--The General Election of 1885--Mr. Gladstone suddenly adopts the policy of Home Rule--The probable reasons--The Home Rule Bill of 1886--Its nature and tendencies--Decisive objections to the measure--It is rejected at the General Election of 1886, having been previously rejected in the House of Commons--Policy and conduct of Mr. Gladstone--The Home Rule movement makes some progress in England, and why--The Home Rule Bill of 1893--It is much worse than that of 1886--The reasons--It is rejected by the House of Lords--Home Rule under different forms--The Union must be maintained--Proposal that Parliament should occasionally sit in Dublin--The over-representation of Ireland should be redressed. Home Rule, it is very generally assumed, has vanished into the domain of extinct politics. Unlike what had been the case from 1886 to 1895, when this was the main of our domestic questions, Home Rule was scarcely referred to at the late election; it will receive little countenance at the hands of the present House of Commons, however Irish Nationalists may persist in urging their demand. It would, nevertheless, be imprudent to believe that this policy, as has been said, 'is as dead as Queen Anne,' as impossible as a return to Protection or to an unreformed Parliament. Isaac Butt's scheme of Home Rule was treated with scorn and ridicule by Mr. Gladstone during many years; Mr. Gladstone was the author of the Bills of 1886 and 1893, embodying Home Rule in forms few will now approve of; and he left nothing undone to convert them into law. At the General Election of 1880, Home Rule was regarded as a mere Irish craze, and hardly a candidate could be found, in England and Scotland, to consent to an inquiry upon the subject; within six years Home Rule was a Ministerial measure; and though the House of Commons pronounced against it, and its decision was emphatically ratified at the General Election of 1886, still, on this occasion, the votes in favour of Home Rule were not much less numerous than those cast against it.[19] In 1892 England condemned Home Rule, if not as decisively as six years before; but Ireland, Scotland, and Wales declared for it; and a Home Rule Bill received the sanction of the House of Commons, which, but for the resistance made by the House of Lords, would now be a fundamental law of these realms. It deserves notice, too, that not one of the Liberal leaders, although, as a rule, they