by their own confession,
as bigoted Gladstonians, had changed their opinions on personal
acquaintance with the facts, and strove with all the energy of
conscientious men who had unwittingly led others astray, to repair, so
far as in them lay, the results of their former political action. And
it should be especially noted that of all those I so met who had
arrived in Ireland as Home Rulers, not one retained his original
faith. A very slight process of inductive reasoning will develop the
suggestiveness of this incontestible fact.

Readers will hardly require to be reminded that the letters were
written, not in studious retirement with ample time at command, but
for a Daily Paper, at the rate of nearly eight newspaper columns a
week, in the intervals of travel and inquiry, often under grave
difficulties and with one eye on the inexorable clock. The precepts of
the Master were of necessity ignored:--

_Saepe stylum vertas, iterum quae digna legi sint Scripturus;
neque, te ut miretur turba labores Contentus paucis lectoribus._

But before committing them to paper, the facts were sifted with
scrupulous care, and where personal investigation was impracticable,
nothing was adduced except upon evidence of weight and authority
sufficient to prove anything. And as during a six months' hue and cry
of the Nationalist press of Ireland, aided and abetted by some English
prints, no single statement was in any degree shaken, the letters have
re-appeared precisely as at first.

R.J.B.,
Special Commissioner of the _Birmingham Daily Gazette_.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

EDITOR'S REVIEW.

The _Birmingham Daily Gazette_ of August 18, 1893, thus summed up the
labours of its Special Commissioner:--We publish to-day the last of
our Special Commissioner's letters on "Ireland As It Is." His task has
been an arduous one, and not without a strong element of personal
danger. That he has been kept under the close observation of the Irish
police; that they have frequently given him timely warning of personal
danger; that he has dared to go to places in County Clare when the
police warned him to refrain, and his native car-driver refused to
venture, are facts which he has modestly abstained from bringing into
the prominence they deserved. We must necessarily speak of the merits
of his labour with a certain measure of reserve, but the many letters
which lie before us are at l