to generalities.

Whether it would have been better for us to have done our thinking and
scheme-making in public, and thereby have sooner forced the details of
the problem upon the attention of the country, need not now be inquired.
Any one can now see that something was lost by the omission. But those
who censure a course that has actually been taken usually fail to
estimate the evils that would have followed from the taking of the
opposite course. Such evils might in this instance have been as great as
those we have encountered.

I have spoken of the importance we attached to the decision of Ireland
itself, and of the attitude of expectancy which, while that decision was
uncertain, Englishmen were forced to maintain. We had not long to wait.
Early in December it was known that five-sixths of the members returned
from Ireland were Nationalists, and that the majorities which had
returned them were crushing. If ever a people spoke its will, the Irish
people spoke theirs at the election of 1885. The last link in the chain
of conviction, which events had been forging since 1880, was now
supplied. In passing the Franchise Bill of 1884, we had asked Ireland to
declare her mind. She had now answered. If the question was not a
mockery, and representative government a sham, we were bound to accept
the answer, subject only, but subject always, to the interests of the
whole United Kingdom. In other words, we were bound to devise such a
scheme of self-government for Ireland as would give full satisfaction to
her wishes, while maintaining the ultimate supremacy of the Imperial
Parliament and the unity of the British Empire.

Very few words are needed to summarize the outline which, omitting many
details which would have illustrated and confirmed its truth, I have