8 MAY 1886, Page 2

After a specially decided speech from Lord Hartington spoken yesterday

week at Edinburgh, Mr. Goschen delivered the first of a series of powerful speeches which he is pouring out against the Bill. He denied the " generosity " of a measure which entrusted not English lives and pro- perty to an Irish Parliament, but the lives and property of a million and a quarter Loyalists in Ireland. If the Purchase scheme was generous, where was its security ; and if it was secure, where was the generosity P He pointed out the extent of power granted to the Irish Parliament, which could suspend the Habeas Corpus Act in Ulster, abolish the penalty of death, or reduce the interest on all mortgages by one-half. It can recast the Civil Service, or remodel the Education Act, and Mr. Goschen might have added, it can rearrange the Income-tax so that it may fall chiefly on Schedules A and B. If you keep the Irish Members in the House, the Irish Parliament will be cut down to a National Council, while if you retain a real veto, every Irish question will be rediscussed. Mr. Goschen declared the constitution of the Irish Parliament opposed to English Liberal traditions, and exposed the financial provisions of the Bill when coupled with the Land-purchase scheme in words which we have quoted elsewhere. He ended with a fine defence of his colleagues against the charge of being reactionaries, and against the confusion between coercion and the repression of crime, and warned his hearers to take care lest, as the Union had been carried by bribery, Disruption should be carried by bribery too,—bribery to Irish landlords, to Irish peasants, to Irish Judges, to Irish Civil servants, and to English Radicals, who, once Ireland is out of the way, are promised endless legis- lation.