Sir Charles Russell made a speech at Brixton on Wednesday
against the Irish Crimes Bill, which consisted chiefly in a very feeble argument against the Times' charge that the Parnellites had deliberately lent their sanction to the party of violence in America. Sir Charles Russell first ignored all the evidence which the Times has produced to show that up to the present time, the men who lead the party of violence in America have been in the closest possible league with Mr. Parnell and his followers here, and have been the most effectual feeders of the funds of the Parliamentary party; and next, he founded an argument for the falsehood of the charges against Mr. Parnell on the willingness of Lord Caniarvon to consult him in 1885 as to the tenor of his views for the government of Ireland. That only shows that Lord Carnarvon, like Lord Salis- bury, was in 1885 very uncertain how far Home-rule could be resisted, and was willing, on the hypothesis that it could not be resisted, to ignore all that was most threatening and unpatriotic in the action of the Parnellites,—precisely the example which Mr. Gladstone and his party are following with much more deter- mination and boldness now. Butit does not show at all that Lord Carnarvon and Lord Salisbury were not quite wrong in 1885 in accepting Parnellite support and condoning Parnellite offences against this country. What the Liberal Unionists claim is that their firmness, in conjunction with the rooted aversion of the rank and file of the Conservatives to the Parnellite alliance, – has saved the country from the pit of error into which the Tories fell in 1885, and the Liberals fell even deeper in 1886, and down the deep descent of which they are falling still.
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