What I fear is rather this, that if resistance to the national voice of Ireland be pushed too far, those who now guide the mind of that nation may gradually lose their power, and may be supplanted and displaced by ruder and more dangerous spirits.
Addressing the House of Commons on Home Rule, Gladstone warns that excessive resistance to Irish national sentiment could lead to more extreme leadership.
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This is not the only place where extra legal combinations and anti-legal combinations have been brought into existence for the purpose of mitigating social disorder.
In fact, these men have been punished for doing in Ireland that which would be perfectly lawful in England, and which, I believe, is perfectly lawful even in Ireland, under any fair interpretation of the act.
I repeat my lamentations that some of the most difficult and the nicest parts of the law are removed by the operation of the Coercion Act of last year from judges and juries to men whom I termed of an inferior stamp.
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