Mr. Balfour, in his reply, recused to be moved in
any way by the taunt that he was taking personal vengeance on a political opponent. As the Crimes Act, in the opinion of the Govern- ment, and of every competent lawyer, dealt solely with offencee which were offences under the existing law, and only altered the machinery of trial, it would be impossible to make any distine. tion in the treatment of persons condemned under it. "Poli- tical offences, he entirely agreeed, should be distinguished from offences not political ;" but with such offences the Government had no power to deal under the Crimes Act. Some distinction ought perhaps to be drawn between persons accustomed and un- accustomed to hard manual labour ; but since the criminal classes were not all drawn from those accustomed to such labour, the dis- tinction must be a general one. An educated person imprisoned under the Crimes Act was not different from a similar person imprisoned under the ordinary law. It is curious that those who profess to regard with abhorrence the notion of one law for the rich and another for the poor should not see the force of Mr. Balfour's reasoning. Surely, if the cause is a good one in which the Kerry peasant and the Parnellite Member are alike engaged, their friends and supporters ought not to demand better treatment for one than for the other. If the Irish were not a people singularly free from the love of equality, they would surely look with some contempt on the feverish struggle made by their leaders to be allowed to undergo martyrdom for the cause of Ireland, "with their meals reglar and their beer drawed mild."
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