The debate on the Address was resumed on Friday week
by Mr. Parnell, in a speech of ostentatious moderation, in. which he spoke of having never ceased to " reprobate " outrages in Ireland,—his " reprobation " having sometimes consisted in calling them " unnecessary," just the epithet you would apply to excessive zeal,—and in which he described the operations of the Land League as intended to keep the difference between the rack-rents and Griffiths' valuation,—say, about £5,000,000 on one year's rent-roll of Ireland,—in the pockets of the tenants, and outside the pockets of the landlords. Mr. Tottenham and Mr. O'Connor Power made bitter attacks on the Government from opposite points of view,—the landlords' and the peasants'. Mr. Forster delivered an energetic defence of his administration, both for delaying coercion so long and for proposing it now,— on the respective grofinds that it is most mischievous to rely on external British power for a suspension of the law unless there is absoluttly no power within Ireland to sustain the law, —and that now at last it is only too plain that outrages in- crease rapidly instead of diminishing, and that they follow steadily in the track of Land League meetings. Then came Mr. Gibson,—the late Tory Attorney-General for Ireland,—who attacked with impartial vigour the party of Mr. Parnell, whose "speech of bated breath and whispering humbleness" ho con- trasted with the vehement assaults on British domination, in which the tenant-farmer was made nothing but a catspaw, de- livered by Mr. Parnell in Ireland,—and the Government for not sooner applying that " coercion " which was only another name for the protection of all good citizens and honest men.
