It is still uncertain whether any large section of the
Irish in Ireland approve the course of the Obstructionists, but a certain number of them clearly do. A meeting in their h onour was held in the Rotunda, Dublin, on Tuesday, and though no Members of Parlia- ment were present outside the coterie itself, the 7,000 work- men who made up the audience were enthusiastic. It is not ne- cessary to condense the speeches, the following sentence delivered by Mr. Parnell completely displaying the spirit of the new agitators : —" If the Irish people eared to punish, cared to retaliate upon those who had never failed to use every means of coercion, the Irish Members could help to accomplish that retaliation. Talk of conciliation,' did they conciliate the housebreaker, the robber, or the highwayman? Then it was certainly not their duty so to deal with the English robber, the English housebreaker, the Eng- lish highwayman. if they wanted to deal with these people, they must punish them." Irishmen are sensitive to insult, and this is perhaps the reason they are so willing to employ it as a weapon. Fortunately for Ireland, Englishmen are too thick-skinned to mind it,—and besides, they remember that they saw and survived
O'Connell. •
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