Excerpt from Speeches of the Most Noble the Marquis of Salisbury, K. G: Delivered at Edinburgh on the 23rd, 24th, and 25th Nov. 1882 The disintegration of the empire. And when the moment of decision comes, when it has to be determined whether it is county boards or the disintegration of the empire which has been pro mised, I will engage to you that Mr Gladstone's words are so care fully poised and so judiciously vague, that no one Shall be able to say that he has been misled. But that is a cruel way to deal with the interests of a great empire. On the firm belief in the Irish that the inhabitants of these islands mean to maintain the link between the two countries unbroken and unimpaired, depends all hope of the restoration of order or the return to prosperity of that unhappy land. On it depends all the chance of retaining that loyal, that stout-hearted population, furnished in a great measure from our country of Old to Ireland, and on which the mainte nance of any hope of English supremacy over Ireland utterly depends. There is no worse service that Mr Gladstone has per formed to the future of the empire over which he rules than the persistency with which he has used language to persuade them that nothing is fixed, nothing is determined that if they agitate enough anything may be gained; that no question is ever fixed; that finality is perpetually adjourned; and that if they will only press hard enough, the deepest interests of the empire, the laws which concern its very existence, are matters for legitimate discussion. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.