Mr. Gladstone spoke at Chester on Saturday in spite of
an injury which was inflicted on him by a woman, said to be often the worse for drink, who threw,—apparently in a frenzy of admiration, for she is said to be an ardent Gladstonian,—a very hard piece of gingerbread (probably what the North knows as "parkin ") into his carriage, thereby injuring one of the eyes, and causing a good deal of pain. Nothing daunted, he went to the Liberal Club in Watergate Street, and delivered his speech, in which he indulged in the most sanguine expectations as to the result of the election's, charged the Unionists with ignoring argument and falling back on intimidation (a reference to Lord Salisbury's prediction of Ulster's resistance to Home-rule), invention, and, worst of all, religions bigotry. Mr. Gladstone said .that the Prime Minister, having been beaten out of every rag and shadow of an argument, had told the country that the authority which the British Parliament manages so beneficially everywhere else, ought not to be exercised in Ulster for putting down resistance to the law in case Home-rule became the law. To our minds, what Mr. Gladstone calls intimidation was an argument, and one of the most powerful of arguments.
Indeed, it is the total failure of argument on the Gladstonian side which impresses Us most painfully ; but that, perhaps, is the characteristic impression of each side, wherever a very great issue is fairly raised.
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