The country, up to a week ago, knew nothing of the momentous scheme on which the Ministry were engaged. One Cabinet council considered it with the result, that the collective action of the Cabinet ceased for the next fortnight; and then the only two public men of weight, whom Mr. Gladstone had induced to give his scheme the compliment of a hearing, retired from the Ministry. Our readers are now in possession of so much of the new scheme as they may be able to discern through the glamour of Mr. Gladstone's rhetoric; but the condition of affairs during the last three months is a picture to remember for all time. When the Hawarden scheme was disclosed before Christmas, Mr. Gladstone's principal organ in the London Press declared within a week that the game was up. The public would have none of it. The return of Mr. Gladstone to office, with Mr. John Morley as Irish Secretary, suddenly revived the hopes of the 'Pall Mall Gazette.' His new start in pursuit of the Irish ideal banished the despair which had settled upon even the most reckless of his adherents. The age, the physical power of the Premier, his long public career, called up reflections which could not be disposed of in a moment by foes, still less by former allies. He claimed time, and he has taken the most important part of the Session, to mature his plans, amidst the silence of the Opposition and of his Home Rule allies. But, if his opponents were silent, his nomination of Mr. Morley to the most important place in his Cabinet was not lost upon the motly crowd outside. All the dancing dervishes of politics rushed upon the scene to amaze a bewildered public with fantastical gyrations. 'The Empire of Liberty,' cried one, 'can never employ coercion.' Another enthusiast exclaimed, after reviewing the course of events since the Hawarden revelations, 'To call these things to mind does one's heart good. It seems as if nothing need be despaired of, as if words of hope need never be empty words.' A well-known economist tried to ease the public conscience, and to neutralize the resistance of the unfortunate Irish landlord, by a nebulous scheme for buying up the landlords' rights, but what the supply of money is to be, and who is to supply it, are questions to which the answers vary every hour. A separate Parliament is to be accompanied by a system of guarantees, and Professor Rogers declares that the surest guarantee was the hostages we have in the two millions of Irish inhabiting Great Britain; as if these unfortunate persons could be made liable to imprisonment or torture in order to secure the good conduct of Mr. Parnell's Dublin Cabinet, as if such an arrangement, if made, would have the slightest effect upon the Irish revolutionists.