"After dinner I had a long conversation with Lord Salisbury on the subject of Ireland. His mind seemed full of "a put-your-foot-down policy." I asked him to remember that such policy must mean force, that the House of Commons could do nothing by legislation to carry such policy into effect, that 85 Irish members would have to be suspended before he carried one line of a Crimes Act, and that the English Radicals would certainly resent such suspension. Lord S. seemed to doubt this, and said, I thought somewhat meaninglessly, "No doubt the blow will have to be struck, and if so, the sooner it is struck the better." I asked what he meant by "the blow," and when it was to be struck. The reply was, "Oh, both in the House and out of it." "That means civil war," I said. "I think not," he replied, "but if it does, I cannot help it. We must not desert the loyal people of Ulster.""
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Prime Ministers of the United KingdomPoliticians from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomUniversity of Oxford facultyConservative Party (UK) politicians
Original Language: English
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Henry James, journal entry (16 February 1886), quoted in George Ranken Askwith, Lord James of Hereford (1930), p. 169
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Gascoyne-Cecil%2C_3rd_Marquess_of_Salisbury
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Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury
Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (3 February 1830 – 22 August 1903), styled Lord Robert Cecil before the death of his elder brother in 1865, and Viscount Cranborne from June 1865 until his father died in April 1868, was a three-time Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, during 1885–1886, 1886–1892 and 1895–1902.
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