ABSTRACT
The election had returned to Parliament a solid party of eighty-five Irish Members who demanded self-government for Ireland. When Campbell-Bannerman decided to give the Boer States self-government, important statesmen like Balfour, Lansdowne, and Milner, protested, but the Unionist party of that day, badly reduced at the General Election, was not united and British opinion supported the Government’s action. The great majority of the Englishmen of the time who were eminent in literature or science were afraid of Home Rule for one reason or another, or for more reasons than one; thinking it would bring disaster to England, to Ireland, to the landlords, to the Protestants, to Catholic Ireland unable to govern herself, to Ulster unable to protect herself. Home Rule was Gladstone's only interest, and nothing else attached him to public life.
