Mr. John Morley moved his amendment condemning the Irish policy
of the Government on Monday, in a speech shot with triumphant anticipations and containing more than one distinct assumption of the collapse of the case against the Parnellites. His tone towards Mr. Balfour was very acrid. He condemned vehemently the folly of sending a small body of police to arrest Father MacFadden ; he touched very scorn- fully the cases of Mr. Carew and Mr. E. Harrington, asking in the latter instance why, if he had been so long offending against the law, his prosecution was so long delayed,—to which the Irish Solicitor-General subsequently made answer that the Government had been pressed not to prosecute Members during the autumn discussion of the votes in Supply, and that this hardly came to an end before the end of the year ; and then Mr. Morley attacked Mr. Balfour both for not letting the Irish Members wear their own clothes in prison, and also, as this was not permitted, for letting the priests wear their soutane. He scoffed at the intention of the Chief Secretary to bear healing on his wings to Ireland in the shape of a Drainage Bill, and to minister to a mind diseased in the form of light railways. He described this Parliament as "one long fraud on the constituencies," on the ground that both Conservatives and Liberal Unionists had broken their pledges against Coercion ; and ended with threatening the Government with an inquiry into the allegations that they had backed up the Times' case with official influence.
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