Colonel Saunderson (M.P. for North Armagh) sends to Thurs- day's
Times a correspondence with Mr. Gladstone,published in the &Ming Journal, in relation to a speech which Colonel Saunder- son delivered at Stirling on November 2nd. In that speech he had asserted that Mr. Gladstone was now acting with Parnellite allies whom he had formerly accused of being murderers, traitors, and robbers, without ever having given the smallest reason for thinking that he had been mistaken in so accusing them. Mr. Gladstone, when this speech was brought before his notice, of course denied the fact that he had ever so accused them, and asked the question, when and where P In reply, Colonel Saunderson produced the speech at Knowsley on October 27th, 1881, in which Mr. Gladstone had said that the "first object" of Mr. Parnell and his coadjutors was " rapine," but that rapine was not the only object, disintegration and dismemberment of the Empire being the secondary object; and this, he says, is equivalent to accusing them of being robbers and traitors. As to murder, Mr. Gladstone declared on January 28th, 1881, that "with fatal and painful precision, the steps of crime dogged the steps of the Land League," the crime referred to being notoriously murder ; and this, Colonel Saunderson says, is equivalent to having declared the Parnellites to be murderers. Here it is obvious that Colonel Saunderson jumps to a conclusion far in advance of his premisses. To accuse men of intending rapine in the first place, and dismemberment of the Empire in the second place, is undoubtedly to accuse them pretty plainly, and not construc- tively, of being robbers and traitors. But to say that crime dogs their footsteps is certainly not to say that they commit that crime, still less that they commit all the crimes which follow in the wake of their operations. Colonel Saunderson should have withdrawn that charge unreservedly ; but Mr. Gladstone undoubtedly takes the reminder of his former summa- tion too lightly. That was an accusation he really did make, and which he has never shown any reason for supposing to have been mistakenly made. He does hot seem to feel how serious it was, and how serious it is to recognise as political allies men against whom he had gravely preferred this indictment.
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