During the week's debate, Mr. Parnell has made two speeches
of remarkable energy, in which he has evidently broken abso- lutely with Mr. Gladstone, and after saying, " I know this old gentleman well," has described him as a statesman who can never give a straight answer to a straight question. He treated Mr. Gladstone's condition that he himself should be deposed, as liberating him from the seal of secrecy in relation to the disclosures of the Hawarden conference ; for it was not to be endured, he said, that when the only man who could cope with Mr. Gladstone was to be struck down, the know- ledge of the dangers ahead of the Irish Party should be shut up in that one man's breast. He concluded the first speech with a very odd motto for Mr. Parnell :— " To thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
If he were to be sacrificed to Home-rule, let him at least be sure that he had led his people to the near vision of " the promised land."
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