Sir E. J. Reed's letter to the chairman of the
Liberal Association at Cardiff on the nature of the Home-rule which Ireland ought not to have, is sufficiently dwelt upon in another column. Here we will only say that not only his Irish sup- porters in Cardiff, but his Gladstonian supporters too, have been a good deal exercised by it, and that some of them are very much scandalised at it. There is to be a party meeting on Tuesday, at which Sir E. J. Reed is invited to be present, to discuss his new departure, which he himself is evi- dently now anxious to treat as if it were no new depar- ture at all. Moreover, even Mr. Justin McCarthy, appealed to on the subject, declines to repudiate those positions taken up by Mr. Redmond which Sir Edward Reed denounces as arrogant and dangerous, and intimates that his own (the Anti-Parnellite) section of the Irish Party approve of the position taken up by Mr. Redmond. Yet he goes on to ex- press his confidence that the Government will produce a Bill fully satisfying Irish claims. If Mr. John Morley's hesitating language at Newcastle concerning the questionable probability of satisfying Irish expectations, was not due to some tempo- rary fit of personal discouragement, we are disposed to think that Mr. Justin McCarthy has a disappointment in store for himself. In the meantime, Sir Edward Reed will probably not find even his Welsh supporters in Cardiff very ready to accept his minimising explanation of the original letter, which was certainly a home-thrust at some of Mr. Gladstone's promisee.
