Mr. E. A. Leathern ended his speech at Huddersfield on
Tuesday with a passage of singular strength and eloquence, -which deserves a fuller record than any it has found in the London papers. After remarking that some one would say, "You forget Ireland," he went on, "I wish I could forget Ire- land; Ireland is the skeleton in our cupboard, and for the last few years the cupboard-door has stood open both night and day." He maintained that our policy had been a just one, and that the next revulsion of feeling in Ireland would be on the aide of reason and justice. "We must persist in our policy of absolute and unfaltering justice ; but, on the other hand, there
must be no trifling about the maintenance of the Union Sincerely as I am attached to the Liberal party, and warm as is my allegiance to those who lead it, I would renounce both, rather than admit that upon this supreme and cardinal question it was possible to give way. The country which begins to parley with its own dissolution is lost. The obligaticrn to maintain the body politic is vital; it is this which made the Americans of the North struggle to the death in order to maintain the Union, and the same obligation com- pels us. To maintain their great America whole and indivisible, the Americans of the North changed for a time their whole nature. God grant that it may never be necessary for us to change ourselves. A nation of nnmartial shopkeepers and of patient farmers became at once the most resolute, the sternest, and perhaps the fiercest amongst men. They flung economy to the winds; they turned their backs upon prosperity; steadfastly they looked death in the face. Is it nothing—a sentiment which is ae great that it should so seize upon a whole people and change and transform them at its pleasure ? The whole world trembled with the shock and shuddered at the caniage. But they saved their country. And so, if the worst comes to the worst, we can save ourselves." Such a passage as this, from a thorough-going Radical like Mr. Leathern, is worth a hundred such speeches from Conservatives, as evidence of the hopeless- ness of Mr. Parnell's cause.
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