An elaborate correspondence has been published between Mr. O'Donnell and
Mr. Herbert Gladstone which took place in 1882, before and after the murder of Mr. Burke and Lord Frederick Cavendish. The correspondence, so far as it had proceeded before Mr. Forster's resignation, was all shown to him by Mr. Herbert Gladstone, though it does not seem to have impressed Mr. Forster very deeply. The general drift of the correspondence shows that Mr. O'Donnell quite believed that if no special measures were taken against criminal organisa-
tions in Ireland at all, while agrarian reforms were promoted, crime would cease, and that he held this quite as strongly after the assassinations as before. Mr. Herbert Gladstone appears practically to have agreed with him, but to have pleaded with Mr. O'Donnell to make allowances for English incapacity to see that crime ought not to be suppressed with a strong hand, so long as the Irish had anything left to complain of. The correspondence is very amusing. Mr. O'Donnell is quite confident that if Parliament ignored the murders, and virtually threw the reins on the neck of the people who had just pro- duced a Carey and a Brady, everything would go as pleasantly as marriage-bells ; and Mr. Herbert Gladstone, evidently agreeing with him, nevertheless tenderly reproached him with not making allowances for his father's difficulties, to which Mr. O'Donnell replied magnanimously that he did make those allowances, but that, in effect, these were only allowances for English incapacity. Of Irishmen's incapa,citytorttle themselves, neither correspondent seems to have had any sort of dread.
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