Mr. Isaac Butt made a remarkable speech on Home Rule
to his Limerick constituents on Thursday. He was naturally most bitter against Mr. Lowe, who does seem to make it his object to stick pins and needles into the most sore and sensitive portions of the United Kingdom. Mr. Butt spoke—of Mr. Lowe, at least, probably of other Ministers,—as "the anti-Irish element, the malignity of the Cabinet." In relation to the demand of the Irish fisheries for State help, he took great pains to show that the Scotch fisheries had a subvention of £.12,500 a year that is denied to Ire- land, and a Government brand for Scottish fish denoting quality and giving it credit in foreign markets. There is no economical objection to the principle of the brand, though there is to that of the subvention, but Parliament is much more likely to take away the Scotch grant than to concede the Irish. Mr. Butt forgets, too, and all Irish Members as a rule forget, how many special financial boons Ireland has, though they insist on a single show of griev- ance with unexampled bitterness. Still nothing could have been worse than Mr. Lowe's tone, not even the acrimony of Mr. Butt's reply, when he declared that Mr. Lowe had been made a Cabinet Minister "by one of those freaks of fortune that showed a disposi- tion to play a practical joke on the credulity of the world."
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