The much less serious charge against the Warden of Merton
College (the Hon. G. C. Brodrick), that in a speech to a meeting of Oxford undergraduates, held on December 3rd, he had been guilty of a contempt of Court, was disposed of on Tuesday. It was virtually admitted that no notice would in all probability have been taken of Mr. Brodrick's speech, had not the Attorney- General brought up the article in United Ireland, Mr. Reid having held Mr. Brodrick's speech in reserve as a Roland for any Oliver of the Attorney-General's. And, in fact, no notice was taken of it till eleven days after it had been delivered, when the article in United Ireland was brought before the Court. The whole passage in Mr. Brodrick's speech, wherein the supposed contempt of Court was contained, was so obviously conceived in the spirit of extravagance, that it is not easy to read it as an attack on Mr. Reid's clients, and impossible to read it as a reflection on the Court. If Mr. Reid's clients were compared to the Whitechapel murderer, then it is certain that Mr. Henry George and Mr. Hyndman were also compared to that worst of all wretches, for which there could be no excuse ; while the reference to the probable popularity in Oxford of any Society for the abolition of the sun and moon, fully showed that Mr. Brodrick's scorn was levelled not at Mr. Reid's clients, but at the voracious appetite for sensation which induces Oxford undergraduates to run after the last notoriety, what- ever the nature of that notoriety might be. And this Mr. Brodrick explicitly declared, through his counsel, Mr. Alfred Lyttelton, to have been his only meaning. Of course, the Court expressed itself satisfied with the explanation.
