Mr. Gladstone was received in Scotland with the usual enthusiasm
on Monday, and on Tuesday made his first speech in the Edinburgh Corn Exchange. We have dealt with the most important part of his speech, his declaration that the
exceptional law in Ireland is hateful, and ought to be hateful, to all Irish patriots, and that it is made even far more hateful than it need be by the superfluity of naughtiness in the administration, in another column ; but here we may add that he reiterated what appears to us bis utterly baseless assump- tion that what Ireland contemplated in Home-rule, was "per- manent and closer union with this country." "Permanent and closer union with this country !" though the Parnellites expressly demand national existence in the fullest sense, and though there is every indication that even the restrictions which Mr. Gladstone imposed in his Bill of 1886 were thoroughly unpopular in Ireland, and were never accepted by the people at large. Mr. Parnell, indeed, never had any authority from the people to endorse Mr. Gladstone's proposals. Tipperary and Mitchelstown were Mr. Gladstone's chief themes, and nothing was more remarkable than the exceeding numerical poverty of the grievances on which he insisted, while denouncing a four years' Government in language which could hardly have been stronger if the most tyrannical of Proconsuls had filled to overflowing the dungeons of Ireland with patriotic citizens.
