[Lord Alverstone [Richard Webster, Lord Chief Justice of England; Irish Home Rule.] Autograph Letter Signed to J. Ellaby, regarding Home Rule and ‘the Ulster Unionist Programme at the next Election’.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. 2pp, 12mo. In good condition, lightly aged. Folded twice for postage. Signed ‘Richard Alverstone’ and addressed to ‘J. Ellaby Esq’. He regrets that Ellaby is asking him ‘for more information than it is in my power to give you’. Even if he were ‘in possession of the views of the Government’ he ‘could not disclose them’ to Ellaby, who must form his own opinion ‘from the public utterances of the Prime Minister and Mr. Balfour’. Having said this, Ellaby ‘may take it that a strenuous resistance to Home Rule will be a main feature of the Unionist Programme at the next Election’. Salisbury’s Conservatives won the 1892 general election without an overall majority. Salisbury’s nephew Balfour led the party in the Commons.