Sir George Errington, who contested the Newton Division of South-West
Lancashire as a Home-ruler in 1886, and was defeated by Sir Richard (now Lord) Cross, made a speech at Earlstown in that division, in the presence of his old opponent, last Wednesday, in which he candidly confessed that he had been wrong in not anticipating, as Lord Hartington and the other Liberal Unionists had anticipated, that Mr. Gladstone would be forced by his acceptance of Home-rule into a speedy acceptance of Parnellite policy and Parnellite terrorism. The Gladstonians, who had denounced Parnellite terrorism in earnest terms when they were in office, had now declared that the whole charge was a calumny, though Parnellism had not changed its attitude by a single iota ; and Mr. Gladstone even ascribes the improvement in Ireland to the influence of the Bishops and the priesthood, though both Bishops and priests, as Sir George Errington points out, have treated with disdain the authority of the head of their Church, when he condemned the " Plan of Campaign " and "Boycotting" as sins against honesty and against charity. And Mr. Gladstone and his allies have excused them for that disdain. Sir George Errington's speech was the speech of an Irishman who really knows what he is talking about, and knows that the party of Home-rule is not anxious to sustain law and order in Ireland, so long as law and order mean a rule which they dislike.
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