It is probable that the Ministry will soon develop a policy in reference to Irish affairs, and that it will be marked by a desire to benefit Ireland, while sternly declining to minister to Ultramontane designs. The value of all the concessions which have from time to time been made to Ireland was curiously demonstrated when, on bringing up the address in answer to the Royal speech in the House of Commons, Mr Butt brought on a debate by moving an amendment. In the course of that debate, Mr M. Henry remarked that the people of Ireland "believed the day was dawning when their voice would be heard in Parliament, and when those measures by which popular feelings and wishes were to be expressed, would be freely accorded to Ireland." The hon. Member also said that "the Irish people desired to have a gleam of hope held out that they should be brought within the constitution." If, then, the day has not dawned for Ireland, and Irishmen are not brought within the constitution, it is an interesting inquiry:-To what purpose has England granted Catholic Emancipation, and the various measures of so-called relief, up to the spoliation of the Protestant Church and the oppression of Irish landlords? As these measures were in succession invented and carried into effect, the author of each always assured us that his particular nostrum was the dayspring for which Ireland was eagerly looking, and which would end her discontent. The discontent certainly has not been ended yet. We believe, with Mr Henry, that the cure of it has yet to be made; but we go a step farther than he does. We believe that, just as no good effect followed the earlier measures, and just as Mr Gladstone's treatment has aggravated the disease, so Home Rule, if conceded, would lead to failure,

and, perhaps, to exacerbation. Until the Irish people can be induced to think for themselves in secular matters, the priests will take care that they shall never be contented. The invention of grievances is easy enough. It is not by assisting Rome to shut out the light, it is not by gagging, but by just the opposite course, that we must hope some day to reconcile Ireland. We must try to let in the light upon her.

Light is increasing everywhere, and the influence of Rome is declining before it. The time must be coming when the Irish peasant will be assured that his eternal state must depend on something more certain than the caprice of a priest, and when he will cease to yield to the priest a terrified obedience in civil matters. In that sense we should be delighted to see the day dawn for Ireland. Till it does so dawn, the duty of England must be to govern Ireland, not to offer further weak indulgence which will not be responded to by a thought of gratitude or a word of thanks, but which will prove only an incitement to more active disaffection.

It was remarkable in the debate to which we have alluded that Mr Gladstone assumed the chief duty of answering the Home Rulers. The Right honourable gentleman, it is true, rose, partly with the view of using some arguments in defence of the late Ministry, which he had not, in his former speech on the address, had an opportunity of offering. He, however, spoke to the question of Home Rule, and so spoke as to cause the greatest regret that he had not thought it advisable to speak on the same subject with equal decision and force when he was a Minister. Mr Gladstone's belief in Irish grievances and in his power to alleviate them seems to be by no means so lively as it once was. He and his late colleagues

have become, he said, sadder and wiser men. Perhaps the sadness and the wisdom both date from the time of the rejection of the Irish University Bill in 1873, and this is a hint to Irish patriots that Mr Gladstone will not forget to settle his little account with them.

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It will certainly be a part of the policy of the Conservative Administration to uphold the legislative power of the House of Lords negative policy, we shall be told. Granted, but a very important policy nevertheless. If it be a policy to paralyse and destroy this branch of the Legislature, equally it must be a policy to maintain it. It is a policy which, because it is negative, will probably not be regarded with the attention which it deserves. But it may be shown in few words that this policy of respecting the Upper House is one which may well occupy the thoughts of the country, now that it is tranquil and can judge equitably. The great crimes for which the people were last incited to execute vengeance on the House of Lords were its opposition to the disestablishment of the Irish Church, and to the New Army Regulation. Now suppose that the Lords had succeeded in defeating or postponing both, or either of, those measures, would any harm have been done? Radicals told us that by disestablishing her Church we should reconcile Ireland; the House of Lords thought that by that measure we should do no such thing; which were right? Again, the Army Regulation Act was to purify the service of all kinds of corrupt influence, insure a sufficient influx of eligible recruits, store up a great reserve of fighting power, for ever put an end to panics, and to combine economy with efficiency. The House of Lords very much doubted whether the Bill submitted to them

would produce all these desirable results, and they would have waited for further information before taking a step which appeared to them hazardous: has the working of the Army Act justified their caution or has it not? We know now very well, by sad experience, that the opinions of the Lords on these points were wise and salutary, and that, if we had been tempted in our impatience to cripple or destroy that House because we could not convince it of what was untrue, we should have perpetrated a grievous wrong and an egregious folly. The lesson we should lay to heart now while we have a Ministry not disposed to misrepresent, or to inflame us against, the Upper House is, that the Lords are as likely to be right as the excited people, and that a time of excitement is not a fit time for estimating the value of an institution that has endured for many centuries.

It becomes clearer every day that the completeness of the Conservative victory at the last election was due to the lengthened period during which the late Government was permitted to prolong its days and to develop its quality. It might have received its coup de grace earlier, no doubt; but had it been sooner put out of its misery, the voice of the country would not have been so decided as it was in February of this 1874. Many a time we have said that all we desired in reference to Mr Gladstone and Mr Bright was, that the country should thoroughly know those right honourable gentlemen. The knowledge to which we were so anxious that the people should attain advanced more rapidly during the autumn of 1873 than during any other period of the Radical Government. This is proved by the elections of the recess,-elections of accumulating significance, the

crowning triumphs of which, as he himself confesses, drove Mr Gladstone to his last shift-his night attack. Now what the people had to learn, and what they did learn, was to fairly and clearly understand how much there was of good or useful qualities in the gentlemen whom we have named. Of Mr Bright it may be taken as proved, and we do not anticipate contradiction when we say it, that, whatever may be his power as an orator, however forcibly he may be able to present to popular and to legislative assemblies his own convictions, he has, as a Minister, signally disappointed the expectations of his friends. He has been unable to effect the arbitrary economy, the peace at any price, the godless education, or the depression of the House of Lords, which he boasted that an uncorrupt will would enable a Minister to effect; and although we know well that there were many excellent and sufficient reasons why Mr Bright could not have, and ought not to have, effected his objects, yet there he stands before the whole country, having notoriously failed to impress with his ideas even a Parliament in which there was a Liberal majority of 100. The only Parliament in which he could have hoped to enforce his views has now been replaced by another of a very different complexion. His opportunity has passed, and his designs have not been accomplished. He will still retain the power of sturdy thought and of popular oratory, but as an able statesman, his character has sunk to rise no more. As to Mr Gladstone, it was through an utter misconception of his character and abilities that the great impetus was given to the Radical party in 1868. Men had persuaded themselves, or been persuaded, that Mr Gladstone was a demigod, that nothing was too hard for him to achieve, and that he

would achieve nothing except of the most salutary kind, and with the most exalted motives. His reputation was too much for him; he could not act up to it. Like the man in the parable who took the highest room, he has been obliged to come down and find his proper level. Day by day, as the gilding was scratched off the idol and the less valuable metal beneath it was first suspected, and then only too certainly seen, admiration turned to disappointment and rage. His American mistake, his Black War, his inability to keep his party in hand, or to govern while he still had a majority of between 60 and 70, the jobs that were brought to light,— these and many another error and defect lost him at last the support of the country; and his offer to bribe the people with the remission of the income-tax and so on, put the last drops in the cup, and made his unpopularity overflow. Such a crushing fall has seldom been witnessed, following so closely on so great eminence. The great comet of 1868-9, has dwindled to a Jack-o'lantern in 1874: after being exalted so high as to be thought above human comprehension, he is subjected to the analysis of every scribbler in a village broadsheet : for there is none so humble but he thinks he can penetrate and expound the springs of the great reverse with which all the land is ringing. A halfpenny will put any one who knows his letters in possession of the reasons, as understood by the cheap press, why Mr Gladstone could not govern, and why he was put down from his seat, and why it served him right. People talk of his return to his parliamentary career after a while, as if he had suffered no loss but what it is within his own volition to recover. This is a great mistake. He may by force of circumstances hold office

again, of course, but regain the place which he held in the country's opinion in 1868 he never will, if he should live to the age of Methuselah. Had we but party interest to consider, we should desire nothing better, in case of the Conservatives going again into opposition, than that the ruling party should be led by Mr Gladstone; but we are bound to think of what the country would suffer at his hands while he should be preparing the way for the return of our party to office. We need not, however, at present speak of a change. The Liberal party is completely disjointed, and, without doubt, the magnitude of its reverse is due to the late Ministry not having been hurried out of office.

Spite of the prognostications of our opponents, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has achieved a Budgetspeech, and is, we trust, not in the least damaged by the operation. Indeed, we think that, on better acquaintance with Sir Stafford Northcote's first Budget, John Bull will be inclined to give it rather a high place among productions of that kind. We shall have gone to press before the chief discussion of it will take place; but we think we may be satisfied that, as a whole, the Budget will be acceptable to the country. Before speaking of its items we are bound to note that the computations of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, though differing in some details from those of Mr Gladstone, as to the probable surplus for 1874-5, do on the whole confirm that right honourable gentleman's figures. There may be differences of opinion as to Sir Stafford Northcote's method of estimating, but certainly he has arrived at the conclusion that we may reckon on a surplus of over five millions. The reproach, therefore, levelled at Mr Gladstone, that he had been tempting the people by the exhibition of

an illusory surplus, was undeserved, or if deserved, it must be shared in by the present Chancellor, who, after full examination, adopts the amount. He goes no farther, we are happy to say, in accordance with Mr Gladstone's Greenwich manifesto. He does not propose rashly to extinguish the income-tax; and what he does propose, though remarkably free from sensational attempts, makes up a sound, sensible scheme, which, considering the short time that has been allowed for considering it and putting it together, may satisfy us that our Finance has fallen into reliable hands. Careful reflection and caution are observable in all the Minister's proceedings, as exhibited in his speech: he has not only given reasons at length for every measure adopted by him, but he has argued why certain other measures which were likely to suggest themselves as alternatives to his, were not immediately advisable. He has done

more than eschew fanciful or crotchety finance - he has left the impression that his proposals are the result of an anxious endeavour for the general good. It is gratifying to observe that in his remissions of burdens, he gives the first place to local taxation, not only because, as he said, it is at this time the object of the highest national interest, but because we at length begin to carry into effect the resolution of the late House of Commons, which, on the invitation of Sir Massey Lopes, it affirmed in 1872. The late Ministers were slow to deal with the subject, and, what was worse than that, they were expected to make any measure which they might propose in that regard to some extent penal, in retaliation for the presumption of the country party in carrying a resolution of that character in spite of them. The relief now proposed

to be afforded by the Imperial to the Local funds is, however, free from animus. A contribution is made to the expenses of Lunatics, and an augmented contribution to Police expenses, this being an earnest of further relief in the same direction when there shall have been opportunity of going deeper into the subject. A penny taken off the income tax reduces that burden to the lowest pressure at which it has stood since its revival by Sir Robert Peel. The sense of the country is clearly against Mr Gladstone's sweeping idea of cancelling this important tax: it has never been proved that the tax can be dispensed with; but the relief now afforded attests the willingness of Government to deal with this source of revenue as far as it is safe to do so. The surrender of the sugar-duties was predicted last year as a consequence of Mr Lowe's illadvised remission; we are happy to find it now defended, not on the ground that the sugar-duty was a tax on the poor man, but because the smallness of the amount made it scarcely worth the expense of collecting, and because the doing away with this attenuated branch of the revenue would give a stimulus to trade which is likely to produce more than an equivalent for the duty now extinguished. The remission of the tax on horses cannot prove other than a timely and sensible relief. The scarcity of those animals, which has lately been forced on our attention, and the high prices of forage and saddlery, show the change to be suitable and judicious.

We cannot but extol the selfcommand with which Sir Stafford Northcote refrained from at all emulating Mr Gladstone in the character of his Budget-speech. Had he done so, excuse might have been found for the attempt; for ever

since he received his seals, the Liberal press has been attempting to terrify him by anticipation of the miserable figure he would cut in comparison of "the greatest financial genius of the age." But he was not only content to forego rhetorical effect; he refrained from circumlocution in his statements, and used the simplest forms for his arithmetical calculations, instead of parading additions and subtractions as operations to be achieved by only the profoundest scientific processes. The clearness of the exposition, and the forcible, unadorned style in which the different points were presented, will already have told on the nation, and disabused it of the apprehension of a terrible critic shattering the miserable pretence of Conservative finance. The Budget is more likely to augment than to detract from Ministerial strength. And we must say a word in approval of the manliness which refused to take credit for the wish to benefit any particular class, or to melt and snivel over the hardships to which any portion of "our own flesh and blood" may be subject. We cannot but admire, too, the sang froid with which were rejected the pleasing theories about the balance of direct and indirect taxation, and the happy, nervous manner in which a healthier principle was propounded. The Chancellor's words on this point are worth quoting:

"I do not think that it ought to be received as a canon of finance, that direct and indirect taxation ought always, or as a general rule, to be reduced pari passu. I do not think we can lay down any general rule, or that it is at all necessary, if we take off a million from the one, we must take off a million from the other. I see no principle in that. It may be convenient under certain circumstances. If we had a system of taxation so fairly balanced all