Mr. Labouchere on Tuesday delivered at Northampton a furious speech
in favour of the "Plan of Campaign." After stating that it was expedient that the next Session should be an "educational," "one of debate rather than of voting," which means that he shall favour obstruction, he turned to the Irish subject. There had been an endeavour to excite prejudice ; but the Legislature, he held, had given the Irish tenant
s first charge on his holding. He was to *rive, and "the rent was any margin that might remain after that." When prices fell, therefore, the tenant was justified in -offering the reduced margin ; and as to the combination, it is no more criminal than a combination of Trades Unionists to sell their labour at their own price. [Mr. Labou- chere misrepresents. The Irish tenants do not refuse their labour, but seize the factory and work it for themselves.] He denounced the landlords as "bloodsuckers," and the Unionists as men jealous of Mr. Gladstone, and so fall of the "insane reverence for property" that they would let every poor man starve rather than interfere with it. As for Tories, they were 4‘ a greedy and needy, a shabby and shameless crew." He -expected an immediate resort to coercion, which the Tories and Unionists had intended all along ; and then trial by jury would be abolished, in order that Lord Clanricarde might be rich. We have commented on Mr. Labouchere elsewhere.
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