Lord Spencer made a speech at Glasgow yesterday week, in
which he threw doubts, on Lord Londonderry's statis- tics of agrarian improvement in Ireland, suggesting that the 160 farms from which former tenants had been evicted, and which, according to Lord. Londonderry, had been taken up during the last year, were probably almost all in Ulster, where the feeling against replacing an evicted tenant is comparatively weak. As fbr the general diminu- tion in boycotting and intimidation, Lord Spencer attri- buted it rather to the new-born' hope of legislative inde- .dendence than to the operation of the Crimes Act. We do not see why the new-born hope of legislative independence, which the Gladstonians boast that they have sown in the hearts of the Irish people, should in any way dispose them to obey the authority of a Government which these same Glad- stonians are always attacking and holding up to contempt, or to pay respect to laws which their new English allies are always crying down as not only intrinsically unjust, but as undeserving of serious deference even while they remain un- repealed. Lord Spencer's speech was moderate compared with the speeches of some of his colleagues. But it was optimistic as regards Ireland, and it utterly ignored the consequences of the rash experiment he advocated to the rest of the Kingdom.
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