Lord Hartington delivered one of his most impressive speeches to
his Rossendale constituents in the Co-operative Assembly Room, Rawtenstall, this day week, on the three chief points of which we have said enough in another column. We may add that he dwelt on the light thrown by the short November and December Session on the causes of the im- potence of Parliament in the previous Session. Directly the Irish Home-rulers found themselves divided and preoccupied with their own quarrels, and the Gladstonians were too much interested in the issue of their struggle to care to harass the Government, Parliament was at once liberated from the throttling hand which had been previously fastened on its throat, and resumed the normal form of its deliberations fifteen years ago. Lord Hartington neither praised nor con- demned Mr. Gladstone's action with regard to Mr. Parnell's leadership. He did not think that it deserved either panegyric or censure from him. But he admitted that he could not but feel satisfaction in observing the paralysis which the new division had caused in a party not only hostile to his own, but hostile, as he thought, to the best interests of the State, and at the apparent break-down of the dangerous alliance between the Irish Home-rulers and the Gladatonian ranks.
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