This change of front, so sudden, so unblushing, completed the process
which had been going on in our minds. By 1882 we had come to feel that
Home Rule was inevitable, though probably undesirable. Before long we
had asked ourselves whether it was really undesirable, whether it might
not be a good thing both for England, whose Parliament and Cabinet
system it would relieve from impending dangers, while leaving free scope
for domestic legislation, and for Ireland, which could hardly manage her
affairs worse than we were managing them for her, and might manage them
better. And thus, by the spring of 1885, many of us were prepared for a
large scheme of local self-government in Ireland, including a central
legislative body in Dublin.[6]

Now when it was plain that the English party which had hitherto called
for repression, and had professed itself anxious for a patriotic union
of all parties to maintain order and a continuity of policy in Ireland,
was ready to bid for Irish help at the polls by throwing over repression
and reversing the policy it had advocated, we felt that the sooner
Ireland was taken out of English party politics the better. What
prospect was there of improving Ireland by the superior wisdom and
fairness of the British Parliament, if British leaders were to make
their Irish policy turn on interested bargains with Nationalist leaders?
Repression, which we clearly saw to be the only alternative to
self-government, seemed to be by common consent abandoned. I remember
how, at a party of members in the beginning of July, some one said,
"Well, there's an end for ever of coercion at any rate," and every one
assented as to an obvious truth. Accordingly the result of the new
departure of the Salisbury Cabinet in 1885 was to convince even doubters
that Home Rule must come, and to make those already convinced anxious to
see it come quickly, and to find the best form that could be given it.