Recollections (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER VIII END OF IKISH OFFICE ? LITERARY POSTSCRIPT The parliamentary impression of my share in Irish Chap. administration was all that friends could wish. At VUI. the end of May 1894, when Harcourt seemed to be more serious than usual in his threats of retirement from leadership, I reported some of his language to this effect to Asquith as we sat upon the bench. "Then," he said, "you will have to take his place. That is clear." I deprecated any such conclusion. "No matter. You'll have to do it. The last two or three months have made it quite certain." On the other hand, self-esteem was happily reduced to juster dimensions by proof positive in Irish prints that I had "completely failed to be either a Lincoln or a Bismarck." Why had I not overturned Dublin Castle until not one brick remained upon another? Not a brick had stirred. Why had I not flung down the reins, rather than allow a single man of the Royal Irish Constabulary to go to an eviction? As if even Bismarck himself, exalted from his Wilhelmstrasse to be Irish Secretary, could have refused to let police attend evictions, after the Queen's Bench had firmly warned him that if he did he would be attached for contempt in refusing force for executing decrees atnight! And how could either of these two giants of history pull down Dublin Castle, without at the same time sweeping away the mass of vested interests guarded by Statutes, Treasury Minutes, Orders in Council, and all the other bulwarks and bastions of the civil service? And this drastic work was all to be carried through with a shaky majority of five and thirty in one House of Parliament, and loud obstinate defiance in the other as truculent as good manners would allow. Liberal journals at home were better satisfied. For the first few years of the Irish S...