The Solicitor-General (Sir E. Clarke) attacked these speeches of Mr.
McLaren's and Mr. Bernard Coleridge's with some vigour. He pointed out that the Quakers, in firmly resisting the law, did so in the belief that obedience to the divine law required them to destroy the human law ; and when the Parnellites cheered this announcement, he turned on them, and congratulated them on a recognition of the sacredness of divine law which he had not expected. The new attack upon law did not pretend to be an attack on human law in the service of divine law. He concluded by maintaining that the chief sin of the Government, in the eyes of the Opposition, was that in Ireland it had already proved itself a great deal too successful. That is what we may call a decidedly couleur-de•rose view of Sir Michael Beach's manly, but hardly, perhaps, triumphant =administration.
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