The Leitrim murder caused a violent " scene " in
the House of Commons on Friday week. Mr. O'Donnell complained of the conduct of the Government, and under cover of a hypothetical "bad earl in Cumberland," who had practised continuous "de- baucheries, not only by the wiles of seduction, but by means of the authority and power of the landlord to threaten and inflict eviction, if peasant girls would not submit to dishonour," endeavoured to suggest that Lord Leitrim was killed from motives of revenge. As he preceded these monstrous charges by no evidence, Mr. King- Harman "saw strangers," and on a division, the House was cleared by 57 to 12, Mr. Gladstone, Lord Hartington, and Mr. Whitbread being hooted for voting in the minority. There can be no doubt that Mr. O'Donnell was guilty of inexcusable conduct in bringing forward such charges against a dead man, without at the same time quoting unanswerable evidence, but as little that the House was hopelessly in the wrong in shutting its doors, and so creating an impression among ignorant Irishmen that the Com- mons refuse them justice. Their duty was to punish Mr. O'Donnell, if they thought him deserving punishment, not to forbid the friends of the deceased Earl to make a public reply. As to the facts, the charges against a man of Lord Leitrim's age, 73, seem incredible ; and they are distinctly denied by his agents, and by 200 of his tenantry who knew him well, and who ask for Parliamentary inquiry. On the other hand, Mr. O'Donnell has promised to move for a Commission of Inquiry, quoted some of the charges from Nationalist newspapers, and declares firmly that he spoke from entire conviction. He may have done so, just as Lord Shaftesbury did when he accused the Indian mutineers of similar crimes, which they had not committed ; but it is not upon con- viction, but on evidence, that such charges, if made at all, should be based. Political factions have often be- lieved anything of each other, and half England believes now that Mr. O'Donnell, being a Catholic, would order a Guy Fawkes' explosion.
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