28 JANUARY 1888, Page 2

A great confusion of political tongues arose on Wednesday, but

a confusion of tongues which we have had so often before, that the difficulty is to attend duly to the various speakers. Mr. Justin McCarthy, at Leamington, explained to his audience how law and order is burlesqued in Ireland by police interference with public meetings ; but he did not explain how law and order is burlesqued in Ireland by the League whose operations necessitate those interferences with public meetings. He repeated again his story of the negotiations of the last Tory Government with the Home-rulers, but did not reconcile his " statement " in the Times of Jane 12th, 1886, with his recent speech, the discrepancies of which were pointed out in last Saturday's Times by Sir Albert RoMt. However, no one doubts that in 1885 Lord Salisbury was much less reluctant to consider a Home-rule scheme than he now is, nor that he permitted Lord Carnarvon to sound Mr. Parnell on the subject,--a per- mission which he must long ago have regretted. But that does not show that the Conservative Cabinet of 1885, as a whole, ever entertained the proposal, nor do we believe that it did.