This day week, Lord Cranbrook delivered. at Lincoln one of
those stentorian party speeches which somehow make on one the impression of being,—like the ultimate atoms, as viewed by the late Sir John Herschel,—manufactured articles, at once compiled and delivered by some powerful political microphone. For example, he said, in relation to the state of Ireland,—" We are told by distinguished politicians that force is no remedy. 'The Land League seem to think that it is a remedy." If there were a machine capable of combining, with a certain amount of superficial plausibility, the sayings of opponents and the sayings of friends, that is just the kind of thing that it would say. It ishard to imagine that it can have been said by a thinking statesman, for the sense in which Mr. Bright said that " force is no remedy " is precisely the opposite of the :sense in which the Land League " seem to think that it is a remedy." If Lord Cranbrook seriously holds that, even granting the political wisdom of the Land League's objects, they could, by their present machinery of terrorism and vio- lence, benefit Ireland, without doing tenfold as much harm as would outweigh that benefit, his sneer has some point in it. But, of course,,ha holds nothing of the sort.
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