One of the most startling, and to thousands of patriotic
Englishmen one of the most deplorable, results of the alliance between the Liberal party and the Irish has been the unchecked defamation of Cromwell. How far this process of defamation has gone may be judged from the fact that Sir William Butler, the very able soldier who is the special protégé of the Liberal Press, on Mond ay delivered a lecture on Cromwell at the Society of Arts which for its violence, its unfairness, and its arrogant ignorance is almost without parallel in the history of anti-Cromw ellian vituperation. Sir William Butler seems to have raked into the dunghill of what Carlyle called " Carlon Heath "—Cromwell's Royalist biographer—for every false and silly story that could be used against the great man who is the object of his rancour. It is an ominous fact that the Liberal party as a whole—of course there are exceptions—has lost its old faith in Cromwell, and so its Englishry—for Cromwell was the greatest and most typical of Englishmen, as well as the first and greatest of Unionists and Imperialists—and allows abuse of Cromwell to go without protest. That Sir William Butler is known to be an Irishman, and is believed—for all we know, however, quite erroneously—to be a Pro-Boer, will, we fear, be considered to give him license to trample roughshod on what used to be considered the most cherished beliefs of English Liberals.
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