Lord Salisbury opened on Tuesday the new Conservative and Constitutional
Club at Watford, and made a speech in the evening at a dinner in the Agricultural Hall, in which he repudiated with some warmth the charge that the Govern- ment had any interest in the charges brought against Mr. Parnell by the Times. He did venture to maintain, however, that "the fact that a man has forged your signature is not proof that you are possessed of every statesmanlike quality and every moral virtue." If only Sir William Harcourt had taken part in the great dramatic scene at the Eighty Club when Lord Spencer shook hands with Mr. Parnell amidst tumultuous enthusiasm, Lord Salisbury would have been gratified, because he should then have known more exactly, perhaps, the meaning of that phrase, which had always remained somewhat dark and obscure in his mind, about " stewing in Parnellite juice." He pointed out how entirely false it has been since 1870, that any Irish tenant could be despoiled of the value of his improvements by eviction, as Mr. Parnell stated in a speech only a few days ago ; and referring to Mr. O'Brien's " tragic nudity " in prison, Lord Salisbury remarked that if you want prison rules altered, there are other ways of getting that done than by lying on your back and kicking at the warder." And as to the duty of putting down outrages, what would the people of Hertfordshire say if a secret association, finding that a man was about to take a farm from which another tenant had been evicted, directed that his legs should be fired into at midnight ? To prevent these things," said Lord Salisbury, is not faction," and if it were supposed that a dissolution of the present Parliament could be forced by anything short of the carrying of a vote of want of confidence in the House of Commons, " my impression is that they are very much mistaken."
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