Mr. Isaac Butt, the second champion of "Home Rule" now
in the British Parliament, was elected for Limerick in his own absence on Wednesday without opposition. lie was proposed by Mr. Michael Ryan, who, remarking that the people of Limerick had now for the first time shown themselves worthy of a representa- tive, said that " for the last twenty years Isaac Butt had been looking at the degradation of the country," and had deter- mined that the only remedy was a home Parliameut. For fourteen
certainly of these twenty years Mr. Butt must, as we have elsewhere shown, while looking at the "degradation-of the country," have come to a very opposite conclusion. Up to the dissolution of 1865 he was described thus in "")Did " :—" A 'Conservative," or bitterly, " A Liberal-Conservative," " in favour of protection to agrimiltme, shipping, and all other branehes:of British industry ; voted for Lord Palmerston's policy in China, 1857." These are rather unexpected and unpromising antecedents for a convert to this Gory new faith ; and Limerick's vivid self-approbation in her choice must rest, one would think, rather on her generosity in according such a welcome to a late repentance, than on any pride in the fame of so mature and unexpected a proselyte.
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