the argument against the cruelty of field sports which he carried on with Anthony Trollope. His cause was not a popular one in England, but he stated it so well as to carry off the honours of the fray.[39] The restriction of his interest to a few topics--wide ones, to be sure--seemed to increase the intensity of his devotion to those few; and thus even the two chief practical interests he had in life connected themselves with his conception of history. One was the discharge of his duties as a magistrate in the local government of his county. While he lived at Somerleaze he rarely missed Quarter Sessions, speaking seldom, but valuing the opportunity of taking part in the rule of the shire. The other was the politics of the time, foreign politics even more than domestic. He was from an early age a strong Liberal, throwing himself into every question which bore on the Constitution, either in state or in church, for (as has been said) topics of the social or economic kind lay rather out of his sphere. When Mr. Gladstone launched his Irish Home Rule scheme in 1886, Freeman espoused it warmly, and praised it for the very point which drew most censure even from Liberals, the removal of the Irish members from Parliament. He was intensely English and Teutonic, and wished the Gael to be left to settle, or fight over, their own affairs in their own island, as they had done eight centuries ago. Even the idea of separating Ireland altogether from the English Crown would not have alarmed him, for he did not thank Strongbow and Henry II. for having invaded it; while, on the other hand, the plan of turning the United Kingdom into a federation, giving to England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales each a local parliament of its own, with an imperial parliament for common concerns, shocked all his historical instincts.