Sir Richard Cross was even more bitter. Ho vilified every-
thing that the Government had done. "He charged them with responsibility for all the misery which had been inflicted upon Ireland,—for all the murders, terrors, and abominations that went on, but which ought to have been checked long before the Government held out their hand,"—a responsibility which we suppose he is ready to assume for the previous Administration, which did not hold out its hand, but dissolved Parliament at the very moment at which, in that Government's own opinion, a new Coercion Bill ought to have been passed. Sir Richard Cross had a little stone of his own to fling at the Government, and selected a special Minister for his aim :—" Who was responsible," he said, for the Suez-Canal agreement, "he did not know, but they would probably know, when some other member of the Government was added to that long list of deceased Ministers to whom he had previously referred; but whoever he was, if he had a proper sense of his position, in having been guilty of leading his colleagues into this great blunder, he would send in his resignation without delay." Verily, this indispensable party criticism does become a very petty, ungenerous, and malicious affair, in the hands of small tnen. They do not mean mach harm,—but they want to be smart, and smartness in depreciation does come out so very much like the sly pinches of malicious schoolboys.
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