In the same speech, Lord Emly made a sharp and
most just attack on the Irish Secretary, Mr. Lowther, for one of his violent and exceedingly loose speeches on Irish subjects, lately delivered at Kendal, in which he, the authority responsible offi- cially for Ireland, asserted that Ireland had in every way retro- graded. within the last ten years, a retrogression which he ascribed to the legislation of Mr. Gladstone's Government. Lord Emly had no difficulty in showing that this was quite contrary to the facts of the case, Ireland having been in a position of unusual prosperity till the famine, due
to a succession of bad seasons, came upon her. Further, Mr. Lowther had called the Church Act of the Liberal Government " confiscation and spoliation," and the Land Act " confiscation, and the transfer of property from one class of her Majesty's subjects to another." Lord Emly quoted Sir Erskine May to show that "to abuse a statute you do not intend to repeal, is contrary to the usages of Parliament." Mr. Lowther, however, is not likely to know much of Sir Erskine May, and he is not very obsequious to " the usages of Parliament," when they do not meet his own views. Probably no worse Secretary for Ire- land has ever yet been selected by even the rashest of Prime Ministers, though it has happened once at least in our time, that the choice of the Secretary for Ireland was made a sort of joke. In this case, however, the joke is very hard on the Conservatives, and will tell very heavily against them.
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