On Tuesday, Mr. Balfour, in addressing a large popular meeting
at the Edinburgh Castle,' Limehouse, assembled to protest against Home-rule, pointed out that there had been no real reply made to the Unionist speeches in the House of Commons. "It had been as hard to get an answer out of the Treasury Bench as if that Bench really was composed of green leather, oak, and brass-beaded nails." The importance of the protest of the Presbyterians against Home-rule could not be overrated, for, till the day of "the great betrayal," they were in the closest attachment to the Liberal Party. Home-rule directly affects the English working classes. "If Home-rule passes, Irish credit disappears ; if Irish credit disappears, Irish commerce and manufactures must languish ; and if Irish commerce and manufactures languish, the demand for Irish labour in Ireland will vanish also. And if the demand for Irish labour vanishes in Ireland, the supply of Irish labour in England will become a drug in the English labour market." Mr. Balfour's speech positively bristles with points, but we can only notice his characteristic reference to the fact that the result of attacks on him by the Irish Members had not been "to foster in him any unkindly feeling towards them ; " and his spirited declaration : "I will never believe until I see It that you will allow British soldiers to shoot down, under the orders of an Irish Executive, men whose only crime it is that they still wish to be called your fellow-subjects, and to ahare with you the responsibilities of the Empire." After the meeting, Mr. Balfour's carriage was drawn through the Tower Hamlets,—an almost unprecedented event in London, where the crowd is usually superciliously intolerant of such marks of enthusiasm. There is no surer road to popularity in England than refusing to hunt for it.
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