Before the Parnell Commission yesterday week, the Attorney. General finished
his opening speech on behalf of the Times ; and on Tuesday the examination of witnesses began. The sensation of the past week, however, has been the examination and cross-examination of Captain O'Shea, who is leaving England for Madrid, and who was therefore examined sooner than he otherwise would have been. It was Captain O'Shea who conducted the communications between Mr. Parnell and Mr. Gladstone's Government in 1::1 and 1 2, and who was told by Mr. Parnell to convey to the Cabinet of Mr. Gladstone his intention to put down outrages by the help of Egan, Sheridan, and Boyton, if the Government would but consent to pass an adequate Arrears Bill. Captain O'Shea expressed his belief that the signatures to the celebrated Times' letters were genuine signatures of Mr. Parnell's,—with whom he has, during several years, kept up a considerable correspondence,—nor was his evidence at all shaken by Sir Charles Russell's cross- examination, which Sir Charles Russell appeared exceedingly reluctant to undertake without some days' delay, and only undertook when Sir James Bannen explained that if by any accident Captain O'Shea's cross-examination were never to take place, his evidence must be taken as if no cross-examina- tion had been attempted. Captain O'Shea stated that Mr. Parnell was unwilling to sign the manifesto on the Phoenix Park murders, not because he differed from it, but because he did not like the stilted language in which Mr. Davitt had drawn it up, though he thought it necessary not to wound Mr. Davitt's vanity by amending it. A great sensation was caused by Mr. O'Shea's statement that he had destroyed most of his memoranda as to the communications between Mr. Parnell and the Government, on a hint from Sir William Harcourt that, in his own and Mr. Gladstone's opinion, " the utmost reticence should be kept upon the subject," seeing that there was a proposal for a Select Committee of the House of Commons to inquire into these communications.
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