On 'Monday night, Mr. Gladstone delivered at the National Liberal
Club a tirade against the Parnell Commission, and against Parliament for accepting and endorsing its Report, which was in his most intemperate style. From the denuncia- tions of the Land League which he delivered so earnestly and with so much effect in 1882, he has now veered round to the very opposite point Of the compass ; and in this speech he declared that the Tory Party, which was in the main the author of Ireland's wrongs, because it " resisted all the great beneficial changes in Ireland," has now " pronounced its censure upon the men who have in the main redressed that wrong,"—in other words, the party which originated the organisation of boycotting and intimidation. He declared the Judges of the Commission honest in intention, but described them as all of the party opposed to Home-rule,- though Sir W. Marriott replied on Wednesday that Sir James Hannen, the head of the Commission, is both a Liberal and a Home-ruler,—and he attacked their Report with great vehemence, speaking of the Commission itself as " the detestable machinery by which it has been attempted to crash the aspirations of the Irish race," and in another part of his speech as " a new and detestable innovation." He described a mediaeval caricature in which a rabbit was dressed up as a priest discharging priestly functions, and spoke of that cari- cature as an anticipation of the time when " the ugly, foul form of political passion puts on the judicial ermine and pro- nounces judgment of a sham judicial character." Mr. Glad- stone spoke of the judgment of the House of Commons on the Commission as simply nil, and of the judgment of the House of Lords as a considerable minus quantity. All we can say is, that there was not a speech in the House of Lords on Friday week which could compete with his own in the success with which it avoided any attempt to be either judicial or impartial.
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