A meeting of the Home-rule Union was held in St.
James's Hall on Wednesday, under the presidency of Mr. Stuart, M.P., at which Sir William Harcourt made a speech and said that there was some ghost,—he did not explain of what or whom it was the ghost, unless it was the ghost of Ireland, —which would not be laid, because Balfour had murdered sleep. After this rather confused parody on a passage in Macbeth, Sir William Harcourt went on to make a number of the most extraordinarily erroneous statements as to the origin of the Commission on Parnellism and Crime. Of course, he took care to ignore the fact that the Government were con- tinually pestered to do something in the way of investigating the Times' charges, and that they actually offered to defray the cost of a prosecution for libel against the Times, to be paid out of the public funds, the Parnellites choosing their own counsel to conduct the prosecution,—an offer which was refused,—before they were plagued into appointing the present Commission. This part of the speech,—and it was the main part,—seems to us as politically indiscreet as it is certainly discreditable to Sir William Harcourt. But when does he make a public appearance now that is either discreet or creditable?
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