foreign policy of Lord Beaconsfield's Government. Few Liberal candidates
said much about Ireland. Absorbed in the Eastern and Afghan questions,
they had not watched the progress of events in Ireland with the
requisite care, nor realized the gravity of the crisis which was
approaching. They were anxious to do justice to Ireland, in the way of
amending both the land laws and local government, but saw no reason for
going further. Nearly all of them refused, even when pressed by Irish
electors in their constituencies, to promise to vote for that
"parliamentary inquiry into the demand for Home Rule," which was then
propounded by those electors as a sort of test question. We (_i.e._ the
Liberal candidates of 1880) then declared that we thought an Irish
Parliament would involve serious constitutional difficulties, and that
we saw no reason why the Imperial Parliament should not do full justice
to Ireland. Little was said about Coercion. Hopes were expressed that it
would not be resorted to, but very few (if any) pledged themselves
against it.

When Mr. Forster was appointed Irish Secretary in Mr. Gladstone's
Government which the General Election brought into power, we (by which I
mean throughout the new Liberal members) were delighted. We knew him to
be conscientious, industrious, kind-hearted. We believed him to be
penetrating and judicious. We applauded his conduct in not renewing the
Coercion Act which Lord Beaconsfield's Government had failed to renew
before dissolving Parliament, and which indeed there was scarcely time
left after the election to renew, a fact which did not save Mr. Forster
from severe censure on the part of the Tories.

The chief business of the session was the Compensation for Disturbance
Bill, which Mr. Forster brought in for the sake of saving from immediate
eviction tenants whom a succession of bad seasons had rendered utterly