The Duke also pointed out that Lord Chatham had been
pronounced by the King "a trumpet of sedition," for pre-
dicting and justifying an American revolt against the Crown, as the consequence of measures which many would have thought much less tyrannical and oppressive than the measure with which Ulster is threatened under the rggime of Irish Home-rule. In a very able letter published in the same number of the Times (namely, for Saturday last) as the Duke of Devonshire's speech, the writer, who signs himself " Erigena," shows how completely Sir William Harcourt will be obliged not only to unwhig the Duke of Devonshire, but to unwhig Chatham, Camden, Burke, Fox, Lord Grey, Lord Melbourne, Lord Russell, and Macaulay, together with all their historians and biographers, if he is to make good this new condemnation of all the statesmen who have predicted, and so far instigated, a dangerous rebellion as the consequence of an unexampled and unjustified act of arbitrary Parliamentary wilfulness. Nay, Mr. Gladstone himself, who uses such different language now, had said in 1884 :—" I am sorry to say that if no instructions had ever been addressed in political crises to the people of this country, except to remember to hate violence, and love order, and exercise patience, the liberties of this country would never have been attained." Indeed, nothing is more singular than that the very party who excuse actual moonlighting, boy- cotting, and the "Plan of Campaign," should utter such scathing denunciations of a mere anticipation of the con- sequences of intolerable injustice inflicted on a loyal people who only wish to render permanent allegiance, where their allegiance is now due.
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