Still less can "the Irish party" pretend any longer to
speak for Ireland. An " aggregate " conference of the Tenant League has been held in Dublin, to promote tenant-right ; but what it has pro- moted is strife amongst its own members. The example of " tenant- right" is borrowed from Ulster ; yet the Ulster members of the conference were received with marked hostility ; and Mr. Sharman Crawford, the father of tenant-right agitation, was not invited, and attended only upon sufferance. The Ulster men have taken a mo- derate course, and they now proposed such modifications in the fundamental resolutions of the League as would have disarmed it of its Anti-Ministerial character. It is evident, however, that te- nant-right is not the object but only the pretext of the League ; whose real object is to give an expiring faction something to do. The Ulster allies were denounced in violent language. They retaliated : Dr. M'Iinight charged Mr. Lucas with having made overtures to Ministers to delay tenant-right legislation with a view to dropping it altogether. This assertion Mr. Lucas pronounced to be "an unmitigated lie "; and out of a regular "Irish row" of words, the Irish public may collect what evidence it can. Eng- lishmen will be too apt to judge Irishmen as painted by them- selves ; and their own portrait of the "independent Irish Member" is that of a bully who courts popularity by traducing Ministers, makes overtures to betray his " cause " to those same Ministers, conceals his own treachery by calumniating his colleagues, and is habitually "an unmitigated liar."
