Yesterday week, Mr. Balfour, in the debate on the Address,
intimating that he spoke chiefly because Lord Londonderry had had no opportunity in the House of Lords of ex pres- sing his opinion of the state of Ireland, proceeded to say something of the results of the Crimes Act. He acknowledged Mr. Gladstone's extreme mildness of tone on the previous evening, but remarked that if he had been told that Mr. Gladstone intended to deliver both the Nottingham speech on " Remember Mitchelatown !" and the House of Commons speech of the previous evening, he should certainly have hoped that the former speech would have been delivered in the House of Commons, where it could be answered, and the mild, un- exciting criticism on the Nottingham platform. Mr. Gladstone's depreciating remarks on the Resident Magistrates of Ireland astonished him when he considered that of the seventy-three Resident Magistrates, sixty were either appointed by Lord Spencer under Mr. Gladstone's Government, or were kept in office by him at the time the list was revised in 1882. When the banquet was given in Lord Spencer's honour, Lord Spencer gave most of the credit of his administration to these Resident Magistrates, whom he (Mr. Balfour) was now told that he deserved the scaffold for trusting and employing.
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