dy knows,
he sits exactly opposite the box on the Speaker's table. This evening he
went to the last seat on the Treasury Bench--the seat nearest to the
spot from which Mr. Dillon was about to speak, and with his hand to his
ear he prepared himself to catch every word that Mr. Dillon was about to
utter, and the speech of Mr. Dillon was--in spite of the halting tones
which excitement, unpreparedness, the sense of his responsibility
produced--singularly effective. The passionate and transparent sincerity
of the man--the sense of all the years of suffering through which he
passed--the recollection of all the risks he has run in the great
contemporary Irish Revolution--all these things spoke in his favour.
Especially was he effective when he described the circumstances under
which he had delivered the speech, a passage from which had been
incriminated by Mr. Chamberlain. He had been told just half-an-hour
before he rose to speak, of how a poor mother had been torn from her
babe; how the two had been taken over a long journey together, and had
both been finally lodged in the same cell. And he asked with a
passionate thrill in his voice, that carried away the House with him,
whether anybody else under the same circumstances would not have
protested in language of violence and vehemence against the cruelty and
official brutality which allowed such things to be. Would not anybody
have protested that the officials who were guilty of these things had
not to look to reward or promotion from a popular Irish Government.

[Sidenote: The fatal mistake.]

So far, Mr. Dillon had the House completely with him. He also scored for
a second or two. He went on to remark that he had been under the
influence of the massacre at Mitchelstown; but scarcely had these words
proceeded from his lips than a look of dismay passed over the faces of
his Irish colleagues. Close beside him were several men who, like
himself, had stood on the platform of the historic square when the
police descended upon the meeting, and which ended in the death of
three innocent men. They at once perceived that Mr. Dillon, by some
break of memory, had made a mistake in his dates. The incriminating
speech had been delivered in December, 1886, and the Mitchelstown
massacre took place in September, 1887. If the Irish members had not
perceived this blunder immediately they would soon have been brought to
a sense of coming disaster by the movements on the opposite side.

[Sid