The debate on the proclamation of the League under the
Crimes Act as a dangerous Association, was commenced on Thursday with a very powerful speech of Mr. Gladstone's, the real drift of which was that " exclusive dealing," as he chose to call the boycotting and the intimidation practised by the League, had produced so much advantage to the people of Ireland, in the shape of reduction of rent, that it was a very unwise and unsafe policy to put down the League which caused it, by any means not creditable to the law of England. That law, he said, is itself on its trial before the people of Ireland, and nothing can be more impolitic than to force on public attention so arbitrary and discreditable a law as the Crimes Act, especially by enforcing its moat arbitrary and discreditable clauses. He described the Crimes Act as a law which, instead of honestly suspending the Habeas Corpus Act, as his own law of 1881 did, pretends to grant a trial and really grants none ; and in a very eloquent peroration he adjured the Irish people to bear what he described as this new wrong, with patience, not in fear, but in hope,—in the hope raised by the recent by-elections that the English people are with them at heart in their struggle, and are only temporarily prevented, in consequence of the hesitation which existed at the time of the General Election last year, from show- ing their growing conviction that right is on the side of the Parnellite demands.
