Lord Randolph Churchill to Lord Chief Justice
Morris.
Very Confidential.
December 7, 1885.
My dear Chief Justice,—I am very grateful to you for your letter, which I have sent on to Lord Salisbury for his consideration.
In a memorandum on the situation which I submitted to the Prime Minister a week ago, I laid down as an axiom that with regard to any policy towards Ireland in the nature of, or containing an Irish Parliament, the attitude of the Tory Party could only be an absolutely ‘non possumus’ one. You suggest a Committee of leading men on both sides to inquire, and you base the suggestion on the proceedings which took place with regard to the Reform Bill.
Two objections seem to me to arise.
1. With regard to Irish Government the Ministers cannot yet with honour or even decency shift the responsibility from off their shoulders on to Parliament. In so great a matter surely Ministers must take the lead and state their policy or abdicate.
2. The precedent of the proceedings on the Reform Bill does not yet, it seems to me, apply at all closely. Those proceedings were taken to extricate Government, Opposition, and Parliament generally from a deadlock and to avert a great constitutional crisis. In this matter of Irish Government neither deadlock nor crisis has yet arisen. In the event of their arising, the co-operation of parties may well be resorted to, but this machinery would, I think, be spoilt by premature recourse to it.
This may happen: Mr. Gladstone may persuade his colleagues and party to a policy which Parnell might think too good to refuse absolutely. The policy might be embodied in an amendment to the Address and carried against the Government by a large majority. What should be the course of Government under such circumstances?
To resign or to dissolve?