Mr. Parnell's speech to the Liverpool Reform Club on Thursday
was not nearly so able as his principal speech at Nottingham. Moreover, it was much more grandly inaccurate and openly aggressive. He was presented with a cheque for £3,500 towards the Parnell Defence Expenses Fund, and he opened his speech with an account of the origin of the Special Commission which was chiefly remarkable for its wholesale omission of material facts. Describing the Commission itself, he said :—" We had a tribunal carefully chosen by our enemies from the ranks of our political opponents, a tribunal which would not be wilfully unfair, I grant you, but who from the necessity of the pa,se were bound to be prejudiced. Every step was taken, every plan was jaid by the government and their co-conspirators to prevent us-..ixty colleagues and myself— from removing that cloud from OW reputation." And then Mr. Parnell hunched out into a good round invective against the 091TRIMPA Pr " hounding these wretehes [Pigott, &o,j on to
assassinate us by blows in the back." Probably no charge ever made against any Government was more violent or leas plausible. But Mr. Parnell cannot even affect to keep his temper when he touches the investigation which, in a form that would have given it no sort of authority, he himself so vehemently demanded.
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