Compliments him on his letters, the last of which he had shown to James Bryce, who with his friends, John Morley and Frederic Harrison, were the men best qualified to appreciate the power and play of his pen, not forgetting also Trevelyan, Lord Granville and Grant-Duff; considers that political feeling over the Irish Home Rule question was running too high, Society having, for once, Science and Culture as well as the Church on its side; as a result of the 'boycotting' of Gladstonians, the remnant was drawing closer together and he himself had been admitted to unexpected intimacy, having had a 11/2 hours' discussion with Gladstone at Swansea about an important phase of the party situation and he now felt at ease with all members of the Gladstone cabinet; believes that the Home Rule proposals were less important than their friends or opponents represented, but while not completely solving the difficulty something had to be done and Home Rule was the more prudent remedy; had believed that when Salisbury turned out Gladstone, by his tacit agreement with Parnell, the matter was settled; but when Gladstone snatched the lead by making definite proposals and alarmed the country, Salisbury then determined to oppose Gladstone in order to secure for his party a fair run of power; but Salisbury had never 'burnt his ships' as the Liberal Unionists had done; was still only a question of which party would grant Home Rule or whether both should combine; Irish Home Rule might be the beginning of the end of the British Empire, but it had got to come; saw evil in resisting it because 1) it made party severances coincident with social severances 2) it brought on the land question with pernicious speed; through the Scotch crofter and Welsh petty farmer, the mischief was being transferred from Ireland to Britain; there was no more hope of the English landed system standing up against effectual agrarian combination than of the English manufacturing system ever shaking itself free of the stifling control of the trade unions; yet the Tories to retain power were unconsciously compelling the attention of the newly enfranchised agricultural interest to the use and to the power of this weapon of combination and training them in all the reasoning by which the patriarchal system, hitherto so successful in England, might be denounced or upset; he was at least as much afraid of consequences of making Home Rule the sport of party as of Home Rule itself; did not believe that measures limiting the powers of the House of Commons would necessarily injure the Empire and Unity; while Ireland might become a focus of American or Papist designs and might produce when independent a permanent anti-British party, he would prefer this to happen than that she should continue in the present condition of veiled rebellion; but he was confident that Great Britain and Ireland could become real friends; Irish Home Rulers were being enthusiastically received in English constituencies; the religious issue had had no alienating effect and the British people had taken up the position that the wrongs of Ireland were in some sense their own; household franchise granted to the four nations of Britain had united the people in a cause which they believed to be popular, which fusion of feeling would do more for the Empire than by the suppression of Home Rule; the sorrowful part was that democracy would have a signal and unalloyed triumph and it would be either Tory-Democracy or democratic Radicalism, which would settle the surrender; whigs and moderates had missed their chance and we should come out of the business with the loss of the valuable intermingling of classes and interests which had kept the party lines from being dangerously coincident with those of class or interest; in these views he was alone among his natural friends; all the Academic Liberals were Unionists, so were the great majority of the Church, the Bench, Literature, Science, Art, Journalism, Society and Villadom, which made people believe that there was a sacerdotalism of Science, Priestcraft and Culture at enmity with popular causes and interests; while the Upper Classes were all for the honour and glory of the British Empire, the lower classes were all for the welfare and happiness of the people; the British people would still fight for their hearths, possibly for their altars and their flag, but did not believe they would do so for mere Empire and still less for Supremacy; the British people would not pay the price of conscription to retain India, or go to war with France, Germany or the USA on any question concerned with the colonies; considered Hart's idea of a Federation of the English speaking peoples, having the USA for its centre, magnificent, but would the USA accept any part in the burden of governing 200 million Indians autocratically, and would the USA or even the Colonies accept the British engagements in the Mediterranean? Does not believe that England had the resources to enter any vast conjunction with peoples sprung from her loins; because he honestly believed she was insolvent; Democracy, beginning with Ireland, might for a time shake the prestige of the British Crown in Europe, but an attempt to argue it out of its tendencies and convictions or to fight them to the last was to waste time and opportunity; the people had been given power and were receiving as fast as possible general and political education and much could be done to guide them if they went with them; most of the holy horror and scorn of continental neighbours due not to sorrow over Britain's approaching discomfiture and disruption, but to anxiety over the triumph of democracy; instances the cases of Germany (Alsace & Lorraine), Austria-Hungary and Russia; some people considered that centripetal forces were in the ascendant, but he was confident that there was much to be said for the centrifugal; believed that Hart was justified in his strictures on English education.
