On Wednesday, Lord Spencer, speaking at Wakefield, and supported by
Mr. T. D. Sullivan, delivered a curious panegyric on Mr. Dillon and Mr. O'Brien, whom he declared thousands of Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Irishmen "knew to be honest and to be working for the good of their fellow-countrymen in Ireland." At the same time, he declared, "I have consistently denounced boycotting, for I abhor it in every shape." By a curious irony of circumstance, which makes the St. James's Gazette suggest that there should be telephones laid on between the various Gladstonian platforms to prevent such occurrences in the future, the following resolution was almost at the very same moment being passed by Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Dillon at a meeting at New Tipperary : "We hereby solemnly pledge
ourselves to take measures to secure that every Nationalist with business in the town of Tipperary shall avoid the streets owned by exterminators, and give their custom wholly to shops in New Tipperary among the men who so gallantly faced and conquered all the powers of landlordism and coercion." The incident requires no comment, though the last quotation brings out with special force the extra-
ordinary obliquity of vision which makes many Gladstonians sincerely believe that boycotting is only a sort of discriminative shopping.
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