Mr. Parnell rr oved his amendment to the Address yesterday
week, condemning the conduct of the Irish Executive in pro- hibiting public meetings, and charging them with playing into the hands of the Orangemen. He attacked Sir Stafford North- cote vehemently for the violence of his Ulster speeches,—which, in a colleague of Mr. O'Brien's, was certainly not a little hard on the demure and conventional speeches of Sir Stafford Northcote. Of course, Lord Crichton and Sir H. Bruce de- fended the Ulster men and Lord Rossmore, while Lord Ran- dolph Churchill seized the occasion to make the monstrously absurd charge that Mr. Gladstone's Midlothian speeches in 1880, in relation to the Irish question, were violent enough to excite Irishmen to lunacy,—an assertion which only appears to prove that Lord Randolph never read the Midlothian speeches himself, and trusts to the equal ignorance of others. Mr. Trevelyan, in a very calm speech, explained the principles on which the Government had really acted, which were,—to per- mit public meetings whenever they could be permitted con- sistently with public order (he showed that at least five Nationalist meetings had been held for every one prohibited); and to prohibit them only either in districts where violence had been common and recent, or where the preparations for great competitive demonstrations were on such a scale that not even from 800 to 1,200 soldiers would have had the power to keep order at such meetings. Mr. Gibson, in a moderate speech, inclining, of course, to the Orange aide, but candid and statesmanlike in tone, closed the evening's debate.
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