It is not easy to see why it seems to
be so much a point of honour with the Tories to exaggerate the terror in Ireland. Even with regard to the personal safety of strangers travelling there, the Tories seem to think it wicked to represent matters as they really are. The other day, Mr. James Croston, of Man- chester, speaking at Stalybridge, declared Mr. Herbert Glad- stone's statement that strangers were safe in Ireland. to be an insult to the understanding of Lancashire, intended by a flip- pant young man to impose on the credulity of Lancashire men. Mr. Herbert Gladstone simply replies :—" For nearly a month I was travelling through the west—county Kerry, Limerick, Clare, and Galway—I was continually moving about the country, by night as well as by day ; I was usually alone ; I never had an escort, armed or unarmed; and my name was almost in- variably known to the people of the places where I stayed, as my movements were reported almost daily in the local papers. 'What I said at Manchester about the absolute safety of strangers in Ireland is literally true. The difference in regard -to this point between Mr. Croston and myself seems to be merely this, that I, speaking from personal experience, have given a literally accurate account of what a stranger who travels in Ireland may expect to encounter ; and that Mr. Croston, without any experience at all, has given to the enlightened 'Tories of Millbrook his own view, based apparently on a news- paper report, which represents the state of Ireland to be ten- fold worse than reality, and which is almost entirely false." Is it that the Tories like the sensational accounts because they stimulate contempt of Liberal imbecility, as drams stimulate the courage of timid men ? Or is it that they really have got to believe that every second Irishman is a ruffian and an assassin?
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