MR PARNELL.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3723, 21 June 1883, Page 4

MR PARNELL.

Mr Pamell is a very curious study, says the Spectator. An Irishman with hardly a grain of Irish temperament in him, a leader of a violent and loud-mouthed faction who lias hardly anything of the temperament of the agitator in him, a politician much more naturally inclined to be acrid and bilious than to be daring and dashing, and yet one from whom all his followers expect daring and dashing words, there would bo something almost pathetic, if one could feel any genuine sympathy with him, in the way in which he occasionally doles out a carefully prepared denunciation, and then subsides, ■with a sort of relief, into the frigid reserve with which, "willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, ho hints a fault and hesitates dislike." It is impossible to forget, to use a metaphor applied, we think, to the Land League by someone during the debate, that Mr Parnell stands in a most perilous position betweou the devil and the deep sea of Irish unpopularity, and that it is almost impossible for him to avoid falling into the latter if he wishes to escape in any degree from the clutches of the former. Therefore wo incline to think that his language must be construed with a good deal of reference to his very painful position. Ho knows that it is very dangerous to denounce heartily the outrages of the out-rage-mongers, since the Land League would never have attained to the power it did attain without these outrages ; and therefore, while disclaiming all responsibility for them, ho carefully avoids speaking of them Avith detestation, or even with the least shade of moral disapproval. But he does not really like the outrages ; ho would, we believe, have been very thankful if the outrages could have been put down -without the stern machinery of the Crimes Prevention Act, and yet, well knowing that that machinery h.'ts practically put a atop to assassinations, he denounces it bitterly one day, only to draw tho feeblest of indictments against it the next. The truth undoubtedly is that Mr Pavnoll's heart is not in his position. On the whole, we not only blame but also pity Mr Parnell.