Mr. Sohn Morley, in his speech at Halifax on Tuesday,
took care not to imitate Mr. Gladstone's vehemence in assailing the Trish Government, the Irish law, and the Irish police. Indeed, he did his beet to modify his leader's tone on this point, speak- ing very highly of the Irish Constabulary ; and he tried to make out that the Opposition have done their duty in de- nouncing secret societies, and murders, and violent crime. Yes ; but Mr. Morley knows as well as anybody that he and his colleagues have not done what is really and fairly asked of them; that they have not denounced the "Plan of Cam- paign," and the announcement of the Irish determination to set the law at defiance, and the open burning of Government proclamations, and the cutting of telegraph-wires, and the threatening of the police for obeying their legal superiors, with any touch of the earnestness that would show the party of dis- order in Ireland that the English ex-Ministers mean what they say. They do not rebuke Mr. Dillon, and Mr. O'Brien, and Mr. Arthur O'Connor, and the rest, as they ought to do, if they would really earn the right to rebuke the Government,—which they never forget to do,—without giving the Irish people an impression that they virtually approve acts of defiance to the law. Mr. Morley says that what Lord Hartington and his friends really want is to get the Liberals to make themselves responsible for the acts of the Government. They want nothing of the sort. But it is fair to ask that they should clear them- selves of all responsibility for encouraging the Irish people in pouring contempt upon law as they pour vitriol on the police. And yet that is asked in vain. Mr. Gladstone's speeches are understood everywhere as asserting that the Government are the criminals, and Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Brien mere victims of their tyranny.
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