In his second speech, Mr. Healy declared his belief that
the present Government "had come to stay," and that if the House of Lords rejected Mr. Gladstone's Bill, the country would send him back to power at the next General Election with a threefold or fourfold majority. He praised Mr. Morley warmly for the pardon of the Gweedore prisoners, and believed that it was the intention of another Minister (in other words, Mr. Asquith) to perform a similar act of clemency, and hoped that he would not be deterred by "the miserable and terrible occurrence of Christmas Eve in Dublin." Such are Mr. Healy's forecasts, which do not seem to show that Mr. Healy's intelligence is at all equal to predicting the political meteoro- logy of England. Mr. Healy may understand Ireland, but in dealing with England his predictions, like the omens of Irish dreams, are apt to go by contraries.
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