The democratic movement in England was continually
weakened by the necessity of keeping Ireland down. That necessity
largely broke the strength of the great reform movement of the
thirties. It destroyed Sir Robert Peel's Government in the forties. It
broke down the strength of Mr. Gladstone's Government in the eighties.
Ireland and Irish affairs absorbed so much of the time of the British
Parliament that the affairs of Great Britain herself were neglected.
The old free and easy ways of the British Parliament were brought to a
summary close by the obstruction of the Irish Party in the eighties,
and the modern rules of compartment closure and strict limitation of
debate were forced upon the Mother of Parliaments.
It was these consequences, quite as much as the sufferings of Ireland,
that gradually converted a great body of the British people to the
cause of Home Rule. That process was going on throughout the seventies
and the eighties, and was brought to a climax by the conversion of Mr.
Gladstone in 1886. Since then the cause which was so despised in the
days of O'Connell has had one of the great English parties behind it,
and has so steadily made its way in the favour of the British nation
that it now stands on the threshold of accomplishment.
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