Mr. Balfour, speaking in the Free-Trade Hall at Manchester on
Wednesday, expressed the gratitude with which he regarded the invariable energy exhibited by the Parnellites in finding him subjects for the various speeches which he is compelled to deliver in different parts of the country. To go back only to the beginning of the year. In January there was the first crop of Donegal or Olphert fictions ; then in February there was the crop of O'Brien fictions, and after that the Pigott crop ; and when the Pigott crop began to go over, there was the second Olphert crop of "imaginative anecdotes." Sir William Harcourt's head had been quite turned by the examina- tion of Mr. Pigott before the Commission, which Sir William evidently regarded as some quite extraordinary stroke of good- luck ; and yet the curious thing was that the circumstances connected with Pigott's examination were not only exaggerated. into pure 'fictions, but even after this exaggeration, were entirely irrelevant to the question of the Government's demerits. Mr. Balfour held that even if all the fictions connected with Mr. Pigott's examination which were alleged against the Govern- ment had been true, they would not have had the slightest bearing on the question of the Government's claim to the confidence of the country.
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