I am sending you Thursday s Parliamentary debates (Daily News) on the Irish Arms Bill, which restricts the right of the Irish to own and carry arms. Hitherto it was directed only against the nationalists, but now it is to be turned also against the Protestant braggarts of Ulster, who threaten to rebel.  There is a remarkable speech by Lord Randolph Churchill, the brother of the Duke of Marlborough, a democratising Tory; in the last Tory cabinet he was Secretary for India and is thus a member of the Privy Council for life. In face of the feeble and cowardly protestations and assurances made by our petty-bourgeois socialists regarding the peaceful attainment of the goal under any circumstances, it is indeed very timely to show that English ministers, Althorp, Peel, Morley and even Gladstone, proclaim the right to revolution as a part of constitutional theory though only so long as they form the opposition, as Gladstone s subsequent twaddle proves, but even then he does not dare to deny the right as such especially because it comes from England, the country of legality par excellence. A more telling repudiation could hardly be found for our Vierecks.
Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1885. Ireland