Lord Hartington addressed a great meeting yesterday week in the
Ulster Hall at Belfast. He used Mr. Morley's recent attacks on him for his defensive policy as a virtual admission J:iy Mr. Morley that Lord Hartington had been quite right in asserting that the active alliance between the Parnellites and the Gladstonians had really reduced Ireland to a condition closely bordering on civil war. Mr. Morley, so far from denying this, had virtually admitted it when he twitted Lord Hartington with the helplessness of a policy which could only offer a steady resistance to this aggressive combination. Lord Hartington entirely denied, however, that a defensive policy is either hopeless or helpless. To defeat the aggressive strategy of the Parnellites by steady resistance may issue in a gradual but complete success. Lord Hartington showed that Mr. Dillon is virtually throwing over Mr. Gladstone when he boasts, as he did at Dundalk the other day, that the Irishmen of 1 are really pursuing the same policy as those of 1798 and of 1848, and he showed that Mr. T. D. Sullivan has lately claimed for Ireland a larger independence than Mr.
• Gladstone's proposals would have given it, and has threatened the minority with having forfeited all claims to the considera- tion of the Irish Party when their day of power should have come. Evidently, then, the Irish leaders regard Mr. Gla,dstone's pledges as no longer binding on them, and are prepared to demand and threaten in 1888 what they would not have demanded or threatened in 1886. Lord Hartington strongly recommended the early extension of Lord Ashbourne's Land Act, and the general development of the material resources of Ireland by the British Government.
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