Extract from Address at Pokesdown, Bournemouth, November 8th, 1898.
Ireland is undoubtedly more contented, and one might almost say more prosperous, than she was ten years ago. The fact that the Lord Mayor of Dublin for the first time for many years recently met the Lord Lieutnant in his civic robes is not without significance. To whatever cause the change may be due, whether to the operation of the Land Purchase Acts, in connection with which Mr. Gladstone played so prominent a part, whether to the community of feeling that was aroused between landlords, tenants, and labourers by the publication of the Report of the Financial Relations Commission, or whether to the splendid work which Mr. Horace Plunkett has been doing in the cause of agricultural co-operation in Ireland a work which has already brought increased prosperity to many districts a change has taken place, and we should be grateful for it. But that would not, in my judgment, constitute a reason why the Liberal party should abandon its effort to secure for Irishmen the right to manage their own local affairs in their own way. When, in August last, I expressed the opinion that no Prime Minister would, within the next ten years, introduce a Home Rule Bill
