In his fourth speech, to the great concourse of ten
thousand persons packed into Waverley Market on Thursday, Mr. Balfour set himself to reply to Mr. Gladstone, but did not find very much to reply to, as he declined to go again over the old ground of Kinsella's murder, or to " remember Mitchelstown." He confined himself to replying to what
Mr. Gladstone had said about the Crimes Act and combina- tions. In the first place, he impressed on the Gladstonians present that Mr. Gladstone's latest Crimes Act,—the Crimes Act of 1882,—professed in its very preamble to be directed against combinations, its first words being :—" Whereas, by reason of the extension of secret societies and combinations for illegal purposes, the operation of the ordinary law has become insufficient for the repression and prevention of crime,"—so that Mr. Gladstone was quite as deeply committed to put down criminal combinations by his Crimes Act as is the present Government. In the next place, the great majority of the cases in which the Crimes Act of 1887 has been used to detect and punish crime have not been cases of conspiracy at all. Not more than one-sixth of such cases can be classed under the head of " criminal combina- tions " by any admissible feat of classification. And as to Mr. Gladstone's attack on. the conduct of the trial of those accused of being more or less responsible for the murder of Inspector Martin, Mr. Balfour quoted the testimony of a great English Queen's Counsel, whom he believed to be a Home- ruler, to the admirable fairness with which the Judge and jury had performed the difficult duty entrusted to them. He concluded with a very powerful denunciation of the baits by which Gladstonians are being induced to vote for Home-rule. "If you desire Disestablishment, if you desire Free Education, vote for Home-rule. If you desire to plunder the landlords, vote for Home-rule. If you desire anything, however wild, however foolish, however unprincipled, however opposed it may be to the traditional wisdom of mankind, vote for Home-rule."
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