We print elsewhere a letter from Mr. O'Donnell, in which
he protests against our article of last week, on the too greet leniency of the House of Commons to his offences. He writes,—" Just when I was most relevant, I was informed by Mr. Speaker that I was irrelevant. This is the habitual prac- tice of Mr. Speaker, for which he is highly applauded by the Ministerial majority." This is emphatic, and hardly what we should have expected from a Member who stated in the House that "he had not the slightest intention of convoying any insult to the Chair." But Mr. O'Donnell, except when he retracts what he subsequently reiterates, is always em- phatic,—to the point, indeed, of overleaping himself, and falling on the other side. In a speech delivered at Liver- pool last week, and reported iu the Liverpool Daay Post of July 26th, he declared :.—" In the whole course of my ex- perience of public men, not only in this, but other countries, and in the whole course of my knowledge of political party, whether contemporary or as revealed to us in the pages of history, I know of no instance of political turpitude so black and damning as the turpitude of William Ewart Gladstone." And he pro- ceeded rather incoherently, if the report does not do him injustice: —" If I were to summarise my impressions of Liberalism, I would say that what lies are in private life, Liberaliem is in public life. You cannot believe a thing that they swear, and you cannot believe a promise that they vow. They are hypo- crites." After this, to be accused only of "brutal unfairness," is so mild as to convey the effect of praise ; and we should have been better satisfied with Mr. O'Donnell's remarks on our criticism, if he had accused us of intentional dishonesty and dastardly cowardice. In fact, however, we believe that what we said of his conduct in the House of Commons was both mild and true.
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