At Ilkley, on Saturday last, Lord Hartington made two very
striking speeches to the Unionists, Liberal and Con- servative, of the West Riding. The first of these was remarkable for a summary of the position which will probably be taken up by the Gladstonians during the autumn campaign. " They will ignore, carefully and studiously ignore, the improvement which has taken place in Ireland, and its prosperous condition. They will endeavour to concentrate the whole attention of the public upon a few deplorable facts, such as that it has been found necessary still to proceed by a process of law, and to the extent of imprisonment in some cases, against popular Members of Parliament and popular leaders of opinion in Ireland. They will altogether ignore the fact that, regrettable and deplorable as we all deem the necessity of these proceedings to be, they have been attended with com- pensating advantages. They will ignore the fact that, in the diminution of agrarian crime, in the cessation of tyrannical processes of intimidation and boycotting, an immense amount of human suffering has been saved." So strictly moderate, and yet so cruelly accurate a description of the attitude which the Home-rulers are obliged to adopt when attacking the policy of the Government in Ireland, has never before been placed before the public. It illustrates well how trenchant a weapon is sobriety of phrase and thought when the speaker's case is a strong one. The second speech, delivered to an open- air demonstration at which some 20,000 persons were present, we have dealt with in detail elsewhere. In many ways it was one of the most noticeable ever made by the Liberal Unionist leader, and proves once again in how thoroughly democratic a mould his mind is cast. Though he does not deal in heroics, it is evident that popular Government is to him not merely what is inevitable, but what is just.
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