Mr. Forster, on his side, pointed out that the meetings
of the Laud League, so far from carrying off the steam which would otherwise result in outrages, as Mr. Parnell maintains, almost invariably result in new crops of outrages. Mr. Forster neverthe- less declared that if he should find that Irish landlords enforce evictions which he thought unjust and oppressive to the Irish tenants, he would not be the instrument of that injustice; and though he could not pledge his colleagues to the steps they would take in such a case, he, at all events, would refuse to he made the instrument of enforcing what lie thought wrong. He knew he should be impartially assailed on both sides,—that he should be called at once weak- and tyrannical; but lie did not mind that, if lie felt sure that in reality he had held an equal and firm attitude to- wards both classes of his critics. Thus far at least, in a posi- tion of extreme delicacy and difficulty, Mr. Forster has, we think, more than maintained the high hopes formed of him, and in nothing more remarkably than by incurring the re- proaches which the landlords have heaped upon him. On the Land League's assaults he cluld always confidently count.
