Mr. Gladstone was presented on Wednesday with the freedom. of
the city of Dublin, and made in return a speech of considerable importance. After acknowledging the "kind compulsion " which had induced him to break silence, and hinting very clearly that Ireland, like England, needed larger municipal and local liberties,. and defending his University Bill as an effort to restore to Ireland her ancient University, and descanting at some length on the increasing prosperity of the country, he gave his view of the opera- tion of the Land Act. He believed that it had enriched landlord. as well as tenant, and this even in Ulster, where such heavy sums. are given for tenant-right. He thought there was unanswerable proof of this, for the very men who gave these sums were equally willing to give high prices for the fee-simple. The point on which the Act had partially failed was in the operation of the clauses intended to facilitate peasant proprietorship, and he hoped means would be found to simplify and improve them. He. referred again to the path of progress on which he believed Ireland to have entered, and expressed in the most heartfelt language his desire " that Ireland should be a prosperous and a. powerful, a free and equal, a contented and happy part of the United Kingdom." The speech was excellently received, and seems to have gratified all parties with its evidences that Mr. Gladstone feels from his heart that cordial sympathy with them for which it is the strength, and the weakness, of Irishmen to long..
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