It was on the 8th of December, just after the main results of the elections were settled, that Mr. Herbert Gladstone wrote from Hawarden to a casual correspondent, 'If five-sixths of the Irish people wish to have a Parliament in Dublin, for the management of their own local affairs, I say in the name of justice and wisdom, let them have it.' A few days afterwards the Press announced that the Liberal chief had, in consultation with some former colleagues, matured a scheme which embodied the points desired by Mr. Parnell. The announcement was immediately followed by a telegram from Hawarden, denying the accuracy of the scheme as sketched in the Press. On the main point, whether he was prepared to co-operate with the Home Rule Party, whether he had recovered from the fear he expressed at Edinburgh, that it would be a 'vital danger' to the Empire, if Home Rule came on for discussion 'without the presence in Parliament of a party totally independent of the Irish vote,' on these questions, with which all England was busy, Mr. Gladstone said never a word. He relied on the virtue he assumed to protect him from inconvenient questionings, and meanwhile the Nationalists were invited to reflect during the Christmas holidays, that perhaps after all their best friend was at Hawarden. Mr. Chamberlain followed up the rumour of a settled scheme by a prompt denial that he was a party to it, and added an emphatic statement of the way in which he and his friends read the Midlothian speeches--'all sections of the party were determined that the integrity of the Empire should be a reality, and not an empty phrase.' Mr. Chamberlain had listened to his great leader too long not to be aware of the importance of marking the distinction between a 'reality' and a 'phrase.' In a few days Lord Hartington too wrote to say, that he was no party to the suggested policy. The ultimate result of the elections left the government at Christmas only 251 votes, and the Liberals 333. Had it been clear that the Liberal party were united in a scheme, which was consistent with the current of British opinion, the solution would have been simple enough. Had the appeals for straightforward dealing, made more than once during the election by Lord Salisbury and Lord Randolph Churchill, been responded to, the Government might have made way for a Liberal Ministry, the best men on both sides recognizing, what the soundest public opinion required, that the Irish vote of 86 should be disregarded on questions affecting the existence of a Cabinet; but before the elections were all over, the divisions in the Liberal party were obvious. Mr. Gladstone had returned with more eagerness than ever to the policy of Irish ideas, whilst experience had at length opened the eyes of his ablest lieutenants.