On Monday a very remarkable scene is said to have
take n place at a meeting, held in Omagh, to choose Anti-Parnellite- candidates for North and Mid Tyrone. The Irish Times, the only paper which has printed an account of what took place, states that Mr. Healy, after a very violent scene in which he accused Mr. Dillon of having sold four Irish seats to the English Liberals, read a letter which he declares Mr. Blake, the Irish Canadian, wrote to Mr. Dickson, an Irish Gladstonian. Mr. Blake in this document informed Mr_ Dickson that he was instructed to state that the Irish party could not in future subsidise the two seats for Tyrone and the two seats for Derry, and that they must in future be con- sidered Liberal Home-rule seats. " In view of this fact," runs the report in the Irish Times, "he was instructed by the Irish party to consult Mr. Ellis, the chief Liberal Whip, with the object of ascertaining whether the Liberals would be willing to give £200 per annum for each of the seats." Mr. Ellis, it is added, consented, "on the understanding that the seats should be considered Liberal and not Home-rule," and the letter ended, according to the same paper, with the statement that " the Irish party had accordingly agreed to this understanding." It must be added that Mr. Justin McCarthy and Mr. Blake deny the truth of the story, and that Mr. McCarthy has promised a full statement on the subject. Mr. Healy, on the other hand, though he declares the "dialogues to be chiefly the work of the imagination," insists that Mr. Blake wrote the letter in question. It is
in defence of the Gladstonian Whips, that they merely offered to pay the yearly election expenses in the four con- stituencies on condition that the candidates chosen to contest
them were to be Liberal Home-rulers, not Nationalists. The seats were in Unionist hands in the late Parliament, but were expected to be won back next time. Possibly this is the true explanation, but it must be confessed that the transaction has an ugly look. At the best, the Gladstonians were using money to put in Liberals instead of Nationalists. A great deal, of course, depends upon whether the £200 per annum per seat was to go into the general Anti-Parnellite fund, or to be spent by each candidate in his own constituency. Mr. Ellis, it remains to be said, denies all knowledge of the transaction.
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