The Life Of Charles Stewart Parnell - Ii

JET. 39] LORD IIARTINGTON 99
Lord Hartington was the first English statesman who took up the gage thrown down by the Irish leader. Speaking at Waterfoot on August 29, he said that ' Mr. Parnell had for once committed a mistake by proclaiming that Ireland's sole demand was an Irish Parliament, adding that all England would now unite in resisting " so fatal and mischievous a proposal/'' Parnell, in reply, hurled defiance at the leader of the Whigs, and indeed at all England. Eesponding to the toast of ' Ireland a nation,1 at the Mansion House, Dublin, on September 1, he said : ' I believe that if it be sought to make it impossible for our country to obtain the right to administer her own affairs, we shall make all other things impossible for those who strive to bring that about. And who is it that tells us that these things are impossible? It is the same man who said that local government for Ireland was impossible without impossible declarations on our part. These statements came from the lips which told us that the concession of equal electoral privileges to Ireland with those of England would be madness ; and we see that what was considered madness in the eyes of the man who now tells us that Ireland's right to self-government is an impossibility, has been now conceded without opposition, and that the local self-government which was then also denied to us from the same source, is now offered to us by the same, person, with a humble entreaty that we may take it in order that we may educate ourselves for better things and for further powers. . . . Well, gentlemen, I am not much given to boasting, and I should be very unwilling to assume for myself the role of a prophet; but I am obliged, I confess, to-night to give you my candid opinion, and it is this—that if they have not succeeded
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