The Solicitor-General, speaking at the Holborn Town Hall on Tuesday,
addressed himself to Mr. Gladstone's paradoxical statement,—endorsed, we observe, by Mr. Morley on Thursday at Liverpool,—that the appointment of the Special Commission on Parnellism and Crime was one of the most remarkable acts of oppression against an individual since the evil days of Charles II. He recalled to the meeting that the Government had made an offer to Mr. Parnell to pay the whole expense of prosecuting the Times for libel, and to leave the choice of the solicitor and of the acting barrister who were to conduct the prosecution, to Mr. Parnell and his colleagues,—the name of the Attorney-General being merely used pro for má,—and that Mr. Parnell declined the offer. After that refusal, to speak of the nomination of the impartial Commission appointed by the Government to investigate the matter as an act of gross oppression, is certainly one of the most singular and capricious of modern utterances.
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