Sir William Harcourt's speech at Bath on Wednesday was bluster
pure and simple. The Times had been "gibbeted with the brand of eternal infamy." The Commissioners had found the Times "guilty in the first degree of the foulest and most dishonourable crime." With regard to the proved circulation of Patrick Ford's Irish World by the League, Sir William Harcourt said :—" I am all for boycotting disgraced and dis- graceful newspapers, but, as was said in the case of capital punishments by a Frenchman, Let the assassins begin first.' Dynamite is a bad thing ; so is lying and slander and forgery; and I propose that we adopt this principle, and patronise one as little as the other." And so it went on, bluster, bluster, bluster, as if Sir William Harcourt had been the winds whom Lear told to blow and crack their cheeks,—and all this bluster from the Minister who eight years ago had blustered almost as violently on the other side.
