the autumn of 1885, and submitted it to some specially competent
friends. Their objections, made from what would now be called the
Unionist point of view, were weighty. But their effect was to convince
me that the scheme erred on the side of caution; and I believe the
experience of other Liberals who worked at the problem to have been the
same as my own--viz. that a small and timid scheme is more dangerous
than a large and bold one. Thus the result of our thinking from July,
1885, till April, 1886, was to make us more and more disposed to reject
half-and-half solutions. Some of us (of whom I was one) expressed this
feeling by saying in our election addresses in 1885, "the further we go
in giving the Irish people the management of their own affairs (subject
to the maintenance of the unity of the empire) the better."]

[Footnote 8: Quoted from an article contributed by myself to the
American _Century Magazine_, which I refer to because, written in the
spring of 1883, it expresses the ideas here stated.]




HOME RULE AND IMPERIAL UNITY

BY LORD THRING


The principal charge made against the scheme of Home Rule contained in
the Irish Government Bill, 1886, is that it is incompatible with the
maintenance of the unity of the Empire and the supremacy of the Imperial
Parliament. A further allegation states that the Bill is useless, as
agrarian exasperation lies at the root of Irish discontent and Irish