I am, Gentlemen, yours obediently,
Randolph S. Churchill.

Committee Room, 26 London Street, Paddington, June 19, 1886.

1892.
To the Electors of South Paddington.

Gentlemen,—A General Election is immediately before us. I desire again to solicit the honour of representing South Paddington in the House of Commons. It is pleasant to me to record my strong appreciation of, and my abiding gratitude for, the kindness and indulgence which you have consistently shown me and for the large measure of confidence which during six years you have accorded me. I most earnestly trust that as long as I have the good fortune to take part in public life the connection between us may remain as close and strong as it has ever been at any former time.

My opinions on the policy of Home Rule for Ireland are unaltered and unalterable. The impracticability and futility of such a policy become more apparent and glaring as discussion and argument proceed. The insanity of a scheme to create an independent Parliament in an island inhabited by two races controlled by two religious creeds separated from each other by an impassable abyss; the insoluble problem raised by such a scheme as to the representation or non-representation of Ireland in the British Parliament; the impossibility of guaranteeing effectually, under any such scheme, justice to the Protestant minority, mainly residing in Ulster; the endless and bitter conflicts which must arise again, as they arose before, between the Irish and British Parliaments, in addition to those which must surely arise between Irish and British Administrations; the constitutional impossibility of establishing any tribunal to pronounce authoritatively on the validity of laws passed by either Parliament; the certain divergence of commercial and financial policy to be followed by Ireland and Great Britain respectively; all this Himalayan range of obstacles appears more utterly insuperable the closer it is looked at, the more attentively it is studied. A conclusive proof of the truth of these propositions is afforded by the impenetrable reserve maintained by Mr. Gladstone and by all his colleagues even as to the general form and outline of their Home Rule legislative project. The formula which I have more than once expressed, that it is impossible to put Home Rule into a Bill, is more rooted than ever in my mind; and even if the Party of Repeal were to be furnished with ever so great a majority at the coming General Election, that party is, I am convinced, condemned to political impotence and sterility so long as they continue to exhaust their energies in solving the insoluble, in accomplishing the impossible.

After six years of trial and labour the Unionist Party return to the country with a record of work and action cleaner and less open to serious attack than any other political party which I have known or read of in modern times. Ireland, on which country the last General Election turned, which was pronounced by our opponents to be ungovernable by the Parliament of the United Kingdom, is now simply and easily governed. Ireland was agitated in 1886; it is calm in 1892. Ireland was distressed in 1886; it is prosperous in 1892. No real grievance now oppresses and irritates the Irish peasant, nor can persons possessing reason and experience doubt that the energies and sense of a new Parliament, if this Parliament is swayed by a Unionist majority, will be employed in constructing a scheme of Local Government for the Irish people so broad and generous that the last vestiges of difference, inequality, inferiority (if such there still be), between Ireland and Great Britain will be swept away.

Facts like these, written so largely on the history of the past six years, cannot fail to strike and to arouse the common sense of the British people as a whole; they must serve to dissipate the factious fury of baffled opponents, to neutralise the allurements of innumerable reckless and irredeemable promises. British electors at the present moment are in duty bound to draw largely on their memories and to make a very practical use of their experience. They cannot afford to forget or to neglect the lessons they learnt from the anxious and even terrible times which Ireland passed through during Mr. Gladstone’s former administration. Remembering how gloomy and hopeless was the outlook, how frantic were the popular rage and passion which during all those years distracted and paralysed Ireland, how impotent were the measures of Mr. Gladstone’s Government either to pacify or control; looking at Ireland now, tranquil, materially prosperous, crime (ordinary and extraordinary) reduced to an unprecedented minimum, the British electors must be compelled to realise that an invaluable period, rarely in history brighter, more full of justified hope and confidence, has at length, after infinite difficulty, been attained, and that even to run the risk of recurrence to former evils and perils would be an act of national folly difficult to characterise, ominous of Imperial ruin. I do not doubt but that South Paddington, in common with all other constituencies where knowledge and political study extensively prevail, will pronounce without hesitation in favour of the wisdom of the Unionist policy, of the continuance in power of the Unionist Party.

My views as to the reforms in the public service which public safety and economy alike urgently call for, are, I think, well known to you; they have undergone no change, save that I hold them more strongly than ever. You are also, I imagine, not unaware of my desire to meet with all legitimate sympathy and good-will the newly-formed but very articulate and well-defined demands of the labouring classes.

Thus recording my political faith, I trust that you may be willing and satisfied to dispose of your political confidence as you have done in former years since South Paddington became a separate borough, and that I may be enabled again to serve in Parliament our constituency and the country.

I have the honour to be
Your obedient servant,
Randolph S. Churchill.