THE GREAT KEOGH QUESTION.
Tin Opposition appears to be imitating the grand manceuvre of Napoleon, which was to concentrate all his attack on a weak point of the enemy. The Conservative statesmen think that they have discovered the weak point of the present Ministry, in Mr. Keogh ; and they have appointed themselves a committee of inquiry, with power to call for persons and papers, in order to ransack his past biography, and so, by destroying his character, to hurt Ministers. Ireland is a field which always offers heaps of evidence on demand —that kind of which the Italian proverb says, "If it is not true, it turns up luckily."
But suppose these researches to establish a criminal charge against Mr. Keogh, how far will that affect the Government ? Mr. Keogh has been known solely for professional and political ability ; and that he should be surrounded by a halo of calumny is an essential attribute of glory in Ireland. If he was publicly guilty of " seditious" conduct, who was bound to know it ? The chief Governor in Ireland for the time being ; who states that he was in fact informed of it, but did not think ,it advisable to act upon the charge,—that Governor being Lord Eglinton. How far, then, were the present Ministers bound to know that Lord Eglinton ought to have prosecuted Mr. Keogh, though he treated the charge like the ordinary Irish calumny which everybody else suppOsed it to be ?
Perhaps these personalities are in retaliation for personal damage sustainectby the late Ministry : but to effect a counter- poise for the fatal conviction of misconduct in a " W. B." or an "A. S.," in a First Admiralty Lord who left all to his Secretary and a Prime Minister who left all to that First Lord, it is incum- bent on the present accusers to establish misconduct against Mr. Keogh, or some other Minister, in office.
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