ABSTRACT
Randolph Churchill was attracted to the Irish cause, and had some notion of enlisting Irish support as a political force of his own. He was himself a Tory, with Radical ideas and generous sympathies, very critical of his leaders, quite ready to strike ahead of his party, or even against it. The Home Rule movement under Isaac Butt, he says, “ lacked hereditary passion.” Irish history between 1876 and 1880 is the history of the revolution, a revolution of which the incidents and results could be watched in the House of Commons, in Ireland, in the Colonies, and, not least, in the United States. Governing Ireland according to Irish ideas led straight to Home Rule, and Home Rule simply meant the disruption of the Empire.” In the debate on Shaw Lefevre’s motion on University education, in which Henry Fawcett had deprecated the government of Ireland by Irish ideas, he thus described the behaviour of his own mind on Irish questions.
