A meeting to demand the release of Daly, Egan, and
the other dynamiters was held at Cork on Sunday. Mr. Davitt had been invited, but he declined, on the ground that the meeting would be attended by men who had made libellous and insulting statements in regard to his connection with the cause of amnesty, and the meeting was, in fact, a purely Parnellite gathering. Mr. William Redmond, who was the principal speaker, endeavoured to place the Government on the horns of a dilemma. "Either Mr. Gladstone intended to release the prisoners, or he did not. If the Government intended to release the prisoners, great meetings like this would strengthen their hands, would justify them in opening the prison doors, and enable Mr. Gladstone to say to the English people : Look at this mighty agitation in Ireland ; the people want these men released, and I must release them.' " Until, then, they got an assurance that the prisoners were to be released, " they would make Ireland, England, and America ring with the infamy and outrage of a Liberal Government in keeping John Daly and the other political prisoners in gaol." Mr. Redmond ended by declaring that he did not believe that there could be any satisfactory Home- rule till the prisoners were released. " They had injured no man ; they had broken no law ; their only fault was that they had loved Ireland, and hated Ireland's oppressors." That is a somewhat curious description of dynamiters. Evidently Mr. Redmond agrees with the Irishman who, astonished by Saxon detestation of the practice of exploding dynamite in the streets or in the Underground Railway, declared that, for his part, he could never see "the harm of a little deenameet."
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