Page:The house of Cecil.djvu/319

 THIRD MARQUESS OF SALISBURY 277

lose, all by whose enterprise and capital industry and commerce are still sustained, would be at the mercy of the adventurers who have led the Land League, if not of the darker counsellors by whom the Invincibles have been inspired. If we have failed after centuries of effort to make Ireland peaceable and civilised, we have no moral right to abandon our post and leave all the penalty of our failure to those whom we have persuaded to trust in our power. It would be an act of political bankruptcy, an avowal that we were unable to satisfy even the most sacred obligations, and that all claims to protect or govern anyone beyond our own narrow island were at an end."

The disastrous policy of the Government in Ireland, their " blunders, shortcomings and mis- adventures " abroad in South Africa, in Egypt and the Sudan, in Afghanistan and elsewhere and the violent dissensions in the Cabinet and the party, afforded incomparable opportunities to the Opposition of which, however, they did not take sufficiently active advantage. In 1884, Gladstone introduced a Franchise Bill, by which he proposed to add 2,000,000 voters to the register. It was resisted mainly on the ground that it was not accompanied by a redistribution scheme, and on the second reading in the Lords, an amendment on these lines was carried by a majority of fifty-nine. The Bill was consequently withdrawn, to be reintroduced in an autumn session, when negotiations between the Conserva- tive and Liberal leaders resulted in an agreement that a Redistribution Bill should be brought in and the Franchise Bill be allowed to pass. These meetings between Lord Salisbury, Sir Stafford

�� �