, Loid Granard was attacked in the House of Lords
on Monday by Viscount Midleton concerning a letter he had addressed to a Dublin meeting, in which he had violently assailed Mr. Justice Keogh'Ei judgment, even before he had seen any but the news-
, paper copies of it. Of course Lord Granard had no defence. It was quite true that he had not even waited for the official copy, and he admitted himself to have been "premature" in his censure. But he should have admitted much more. As the Lord-Lieutenant of an Irish county and a Peer of Parlia- ment, he was bound to be exceedingly circumspect in attacking a Judge's judgment ; and he ought certainly to have attacked it, if at all, from his place in the House of Lords. We can say this with the better grace, that we ourselves have not shrunk
from condemning the tone of Mr. Justice Keogh's attack on the priests, and still more his defence,—as it seems to us, in the face of the most unanswerable evidence,—of Captain Trench's inti- midating landowner friends. But then our proper position is criticism, and criticism, rnoreover,—carefully guarded against the possibility of misreport,—on such evidence as the day bringsforth. The more that part of the evidence which affects the priestly intimidation is considered, the more triumphantly will the justice of Mr. Justice Keogh's view (in spite of the undue violence of his language) on that head be vindicated. And the more the evidence is studied the more completely will the failure of justice in relation to the conduct of the Galway landlords be demonstrated. Still, Lord Granard was in the wrong any way.
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