Up to Friday afternoon, the Parnell Commission, which began its
regular sittings on Monday, had been occupied almost exclusively in listening to the Attorney-General's opening of his case for the Times. In the conversation on Wednesday morning, Sir Charles Russell, the chief counsel on the other side, managed to twit Sir Richard Webster with giving a mere rechauP of the old charges against the Land League. As the old charges brought against the Land League have never been tried before any tribunal, and as the object of this Commission is to get them tried, that surely, far from being a blot on Sir R. Webster's performance, may well have been a merit. It would have been a sure sign of weak- ness if the Attorney-General had not rested his case on the old grounds. He gave ample specimens of the language used at Land League meetings, and then ample specimens of the outrages which followed the use of that language. He sketched the evidence that some of the most violent of the League orators had been paid out of the funds of the League for their services as agitators. He showed that of some of the most violent of these agitators Mr. Parnell had said that he was satisfied of their power to still the troubled waters, when, in 1882, he proposed to make terms with Mr. Gladstone's Government, —the only experience he had of them being at that time experience of their great effectiveness as troublers of the waters. Sir R. Webster dwelt at length on the close con- nection between the Irish-American agitators who avowed that they wished for violence, and the so-called Irish Consti- tutionalists who professed to desire the use only of con- stitutional means ; and he pointed out that the American organs of violence had been distributed in vast numbers in Ireland, and that the Irish leaders, amongst whom Mr. Davitt was singled out as the most important link between the American and the Irish agitators, had expressed their gratitude to those who conducted these journals, for the pecuniary help, as well as the moral support, which they had furnished to the cause of the Land League. With regard to the dispute as to what documents shall be at once discovered to the other side, both parties have consented to defer to the decision of the Commissioners themselves.
