-  On  the  very  day  on  which  the  Prime  Minister  announced  his  refusal  to
receive  the  Munster  deputation,  on  the  ground  of  pressure  of  business,  he  had  been
actually  receiving  an  obscure  deputation  from  Glasgow  on  the  subject  of  Sunday
Closing  !


440        AN   OLIVE  BRANCH   IN   IRELAND


CH.  XX


Statesmanship.      Having  no  other  fault  to  find  either  with  the

composition  or  proceedings  of  the  historic  Munster  gathering,

he  picked  out  a  sentence  from  the  speech  of  Mr.  Butcher,  of

all   men — the  very  abstract  of  courtesy  and   fine  feeling —

referring  to  the  quite  notorious  hostility  of  the  Treasury  to

the   Act  of   1903,  to  write  a  public  letter  inveighing  against

this  heinous  offence,  and  on  the  strength  of  this  one  sentence

from  the  speech  of  an  individual  speaker,  banged  the  door  in

the   faces  of  a   deputation  under  whose  feet  a  wise  English

Minister  might  well  have  scattered  roses.     To  make  his  refusal

to  receive  the  deputation  all  the  more  offensive,  he  scoffed  at

the  suggestion  that  the  treaty  of  1903  involved  any  bargain

on  England's  part  beyond  the  strictest  letter  of  the  bond  (a

draughtsman's  confessed   mistake  included),  although  nothing

was  easier  than  to  prove  to  him  in  reply,  out  of  the  mouths

of  all  the  men  of  leading  in  the  old  Liberal  Cabinet — Sir  H.
Campbell-Bannerman,  Mr.  Morley,  Mr.  Haldane,  Sir  Edward

Grey,  and  Mr.  John  Burns — that  they  had  celebrated  the  Act

as  the  most  blessed  pact  of  peace  that  had  ever  been  sealed

between  the  two  islands.
