The Barrow Herald and Furness Advertiser. — 1883-08-21 (Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, England)

LIVERPOOL. 18470 Bat that 18 a mild way of putting it. They might  be understood to have a resentful feeling against the English for past neglect and injustice ; they might even be credited with a dislike of all association with English nationality; but if they had only a spice of genuine nobility of soul, or had the sligatest capacity to comprehend the motives and actions of those who are opposed to them, they would not stoop to utter what they know to be the base exaggerations and mendacious utterances to which one of the least uneducated of their number committed himself on Saturday night in the House of Commons. When one remembers the high-bred cot- -tesy and gentlemanly demeanour of the Irish Members of Parliament of the last generation, one wonders whether the race has indeed become extinct. To compare Henry Gratton, Lalor Shiel Flood, Curran, and O'Connel with Biggar, Callan, or any of the Parnell party of the present day, would be an inj ut to the memory of the former. What could justify Healy, the newly elected member for Monahan, in saying of an honorable kindly friend of the Irish nation like Mr. Trevelyan, the Irish Secretary, that he would "defend the constabulary if they spitted babes on the bayonets." What can be thought of a Biggar who, when the Prime Minister said that if he "never again" addressed the House on Irish questions, cried out "hear, hear," as if to rejoice in the possibility of Mr. Gladstone's speedy decease. Such men as these must live in a different moral atmosphere to that of eve.y-day upright Englishmen. This section of Irishmen seems to have no spirit of generous candour or manly frankness so as to acknowledge that the Government—however much the mode of action might be differed from— at least striven in some degree to carry remedial measures for the good and benefit of 'be Irish people. Nothing is gained ;on the contrary much is thrown away, by allowing passion and malice to cloud their judgment and cause them to utter that which is not only untruthful but which has a el'rect tendency to rouse amongst masses of their ignorant and excitable countrymen the same Nileness aud deliberate treachery which brought forth the murders in Phceuix Park. Is it not almost to be regretted that the time of these men's appearance in politics did not occur under some Tory Government, who would have given them a taste of the sternness of repression, without any attempt at the emelioration which the present Min ist.; have so constantly and so persistently given. Mr. Lowther, `-oin the Tory benches, gave a foretaste of what would have been the tender mercies , of him and his party if they had been in office. But even the Conservatives, by their organ the Standard of yesterday, speak in admiration of the grand and lofty forbearance of Mr. Gladstone in his impromptu reply to the vindictiveness of these Irishmen. It says,—" It" (Mr. Gladstone's speech) "was worthy of Parliament and the gravity of the occasion. If we are to convince the people whose mandate Mr. Healy holds, we must meet them on their own ground. This Mr. Gladstone did. He did not effect surprise and indignation that Ireland witholds her love and remembers her wrongs. He admitted that the bitterness of feeling is at least explicable. But he pointed out that every patriotic—nay, every honest and conscieatious man ought to labour to moderate, not to exasperate feeling. He rebuked Mr. Healy's virulence, not because it harmed the Governrneat, but because it was a future impediment to peace and concord. And, not scorning to argue matters which to ordinary Englishmen appear too plain to need argument, he reminded the occapants of the Homerule benches that beyond all questiun a great work has been done of late in Ireland. Society there has, by the rigid enforcement of law, been rescued from a condition of anarchy and violence which even they recognised as obvious and deplorable. If in the process of repression there had been errors of judgment, it was only right to extend some indulgence to those who, under extraordinary difficulties and inficite labour and personal peril, had effected the change."