Mr. Horsman, if he does not take care, will lose
his title to be regarded even as a "superior person." He had been hinting for a week in correspondence with the Times the approach of a most awful disclosure affecting the character of his recent oppo- nent at Liskeard, Mr. Leonard Courtney. This was the language in which he foreshadowed this disclosure in the Times of Monday last :—" Mr. Courtney cannot and shall not now escape from the fact" [what, by the way, is the modes operandi of escaping from a fact 7] "that I have in the most public manner, on two occa- sions—first at Liskeard and now in the Times—charged him with that which is, of all charges, the most disgraceful and intolerable for a man with the character and feelings of a gentleman to lie under ;" and he then proceeded to challenge Mr. Courtney to produce the correspondence in which this "disgraceful and intolerable charge" was substantiated. Mr. Courtney had kept no copy of it, but on being supplied with a copy by Mr. Horsman, he sent it at once to the Times, when this " most disgraceful and intolerable charge" came out. Mr. Courtney had declared, according to Mr. Horsman and his friends, on beginning the contest at Liskeard, that he came purely as a volunteer, and "without any previous communication, direct or indirect, with any one in the borough,"—the fact being that he had telegraphed to some one in Liskeard to announce his intended arrival and errand, we believe, the day before he came. Mr. Courtney himself maintained that what he had said was that he had had no invitation, direct or indirect, that his coming was purely proprio mote, and not due to any local request or suggestion. One of the persons who heard his first announcement supported Mr. florsman's account of what he said ; another, it appears, a friend of the first, supported Mr. Courtney's. But whichever was right, no truly "superior person" would have attached the least importance to Mr. Courtney's error, if error it was. Of course, as regards the point in question—his being a pure volunteer— the only material point was whether he had been requested to come or not, not whether he had previously announced his coming or not ; and if the word ' communication ' was used instead of it was probably used in its proper sense of mutual and reciprocal counsel, not in its narrow sense of a mere one-sided advice. Mr. Horsman, if we may judge by his letter in Thursday's Times, is now a little ashamed of his ridiculous charge. And well he may be. No superior person, even of the feminine gender, would so exaggerate and misconstrue a rival's actions.
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