Lord Cross, speaking in Trafford Park, Manchester, on Saturday, remarked
that Mr. Gladstone's assertion that " Ireland stops the way," had not been verified in the Session of 1888. Mr. Goschen had done, with regard to the National Debt, what Mr. Childers had failed in doing,—namely, saved the country a great deal of interest ; and a saving of the same kind had been effected for India, amounting to a quarter of a million annually; and, lastly, the great Local Government Act had been passed, which would give the local government of the counties help out of Imperial taxes to the extent of seven millions a year. As for Ireland, so far from having diminished the liberty of the subject there. no man who did not try to stimulate disobedience to the law would so much as know that there was any coercion applied, unless he knew it by his own greater freedom from the inter- ference of local tyrants. Mr. Gladstone's contention that so- called political prisoners should be more lightly punished for in- citing others to disobey the law, than those who took the advice, was nothing but a oontention that there should be a milder law for the rich and a severer law for the poor, the most undemo- cratic principle of which he had ever heard the advocacy. Lord Cross is right, but the truth is that the Irish people at present care very little about the principle of democracy. They appear to wish to establish an oligarchy with Mr. Parnell at the head, because they believe that that oligarchy will get them their land cheap.
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