The debate in the Lords on Friday week on the
subject of the Parnell Commission was remarkable chiefly for its sobriety, though Lord Salisbury obviously went too far when he argued that because Courts of Justice do not apologise to the accused for the charges on which they are acquitted, Parliament owed no apology to Mr. Parnell for leaving him so long under the cloud of a very serious false imputation, which was also con- fessedly a breach of privilege. The fact that it was a breach of privilege, and one for which the House of Commons very wisely declined to summon to the bar those who were responsible for it, made it, as we think, fitting that some such expression of regret should have been added to the notice taken by the House of Commons at least of the Commissioners' Report. For the rest, Lord Salisbury's speech was very impressive. He showed that he had never regarded the question of the forged letters as the kernel of the imputations to be inquired into, and that the very essence of the political investigation was that connection between the political agitation and the spread of outrage on which the Commissioners have reported so ably and so judicially. In fact, the latter part of Lord Salisbury's speech might have been a reproduction of our argument of last Saturday on " Insurrection and Outrage," only that Lord Salisbury could not possibly have read what was being printed off while he spoke.
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