The Eighty Club gave a dinner to Lord Spencer at
Willis's Rooms yesterday week, at which Lord Spencer and Mr. Parnell shook hands amidst enthusiastic cheering. Lord Spencer's speech was lengthy, and contained a forecast of the Parliamentary attack on the Government for its conduct in relation to the Parnell Commission, of which the meeting at St. James's Hall last Wednesday was an elaborate confirma- tion. Lord Spencer spoke of the attacks made on Mr. Parnell as "surpassing in vehemence and bitterness and wickedness" any which have ever been made against any other man. Later in his speech, he said :—" Boycotting, we hear, is diminishing, and I am very glad to hear it. I detest the practice of boy- cotting." Now, considering that the great hero of the occasion, with whom Lord Spencer had so dramatically shaken hands, and who was sitting beside him, had, a strict and undisputed monopoly in the credit of inventing that wicked method of social excommunication,—which has substituted for the forms of misery it was supposed to relieve, forms of sin and misery of a very much deeper kind,—the entente cordials concluded between Lord Spencer and Mr. Parnell was not quite opportune.
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