On the 21st inst., Mr. Parnell sanctioned a furious manifesto,
signed by the Council of the Irish Nationalists of Great Britain, calling upon all his countrymen in England and Scot- land to vote for Tories. The Liberals, it is declared, as in 1880, are appealing to the country on false pretences. They promised peace, and gave war; they pledged themselves to economy, and their Budget was the highest ever seen ; and, horror of horrors, " they crushed a national movement under Arabi." They flagrantly violated all pledges to Ireland, and practised " a system of coercion more brutal than that of any previous Administration." Juries were packed " with a shamelessness unprecedented even in Liberal Administrations," innocent men were hung or sent to penal servitude ; twelve hundred per- sons were imprisoned without trial ; " ladies were convicted under an obsolete Act directed against the degraded of their sex ;" and the representatives of Liberalism were men like Mr. Forster and Lord Spencer, " who have left more hateful memories in Ireland than any statesman of the century." But for the long-delayed Irish triumph, land- lords would still be refusing reasonable abatements of rent. The Liberals began by menacing the Established Church, and attempted to crush religious education and fetter the rights of conscience. "Reform of Procedure means a new gag;" the self-government offered to Ireland is "a halting measure to be forced upon the Trish people by the same wholesale im- prisonment by which durability was sought for the imprac- ticable Land Act of 1881." Therefore it is the duty of Irish- men " to prevent the Government of the Empire falling into the hands of a party so perfidious, treacherous, and incom- petent." A more wonderful display of political ingratitude was probably never made.
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