The Unionists were at their sinister work of delaying its
progress by all kinds of absurd and irrelevant amendments. For instance,
one Unionist wished to restrict the Irish Legislature as to the law of
marriage and divorce. Mr. Gladstone has over and over again pointed out
that, as the Irish have one way of looking at these things, and the
English another, it would be absurd not to allow the Irish Legislature
to settle such a matter in accordance with Irish feeling. Curiously
enough, the Unionists did not receive much encouragement on this point
from the Irish branch of the enemies of Home Rule. Mr. Macartney, an
Irish Orangeman, proclaimed on the part of his co-religionists that the
Irish Protestants had nearly as much objection to divorce as the Irish
Catholics; and, so far as that part of the amendment was concerned, he
had no desire to see it pressed. What he apprehended was a change in the
law for the purpose of prejudicing mixed marriages--marriages between
Catholics and Protestants. Mr. Gladstone, it is well known, on the
question of divorce is a very sound and very strong Conservative. The
sturdy fight he made against divorce still lives in Parliamentary
history, and has often been brought up--sometimes in justification of
equally stubborn fights--against him.
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