The Anti-Parnellites founded their opposition to the National League (which
is Parnellite) on Tuesday, in a gathering held in the Ancient Concert-Room, Dublin, which was carefully protected by tickets from the invasion of the Parnellites, who number almost all the Dublin roughs amongst them. Letters of adhesion, enclosing subscriptions, were read from the four Archbishops (Logue of Armagh, Walsh of Dublin, Croke of Cashel, and MacEvilly of Tuanc). One-third of the gathering was said to consist of priests. Archbishop Walsh, in his letter, anticipated a struggle with the Parnellites involving much pain, and possibly some disaster. To submit to Mr. Parnell's leadership, he said, meant forfeiting the good- will of the English people, without which it was impossible to hope for any peaceful assertion of Irish rights. Even if thoroughly beaten at the General Election, the Archbishop doubted whether Mr. Parnell would give up his pretensions. " Why, indeed," he asks, " should he do so P Is he not our born leader P Are we not born to be his humble followers And is it not the duty of such a leader to lash his followers into submission P Here surely we have ' dictatorship' in its very essence,"—a dictatorship which, the Archbishop goes on to show, is much worse than Mr. Gladstone's. The Arch- bishop's letter takes no ground higher than the ground of policy, and makes no profession of any wish to enter upon a new and more moral, as well as more legal, course of popular agitation.
