Irish Parliamentary candidates are selected under a system in which the party caucus has far less share than in any part of the three kingdoms. They have behind them the credentials of popular election which are not possessed by a single one of the self-constituted group of critics who assail them; and one need only say that vague, unfounded charges as to political probity, in no instance substantiated by a single shred of proof, do not redound to the credit of those who frame them. When the advocates of Sinn Féin can point to a record of services as disinterested and as consistent as those of the Irish Parliamentary Party, when they can produce evidence of work in the immediate past as fruitful for the good of their country as the Labourers Act, the Town Tenants Act, and the Merchandise Marks Act, they will have some ground upon which to claim a hearing from their countrymen. Till then they have no cause to throw stones at those who are honestly working for the good of their country, although they do not proclaim themselves on the housetops the only patriotic section of the Irish people. Not one of the advocates of this bloodless war which they propose has, so far as I am aware, in spite of three years spent in preaching on the subject, refused to pay income tax, the only tax resistance to which is possible in Ireland. Those who hold Civil Service appointments under the British Crown have not in a single instance, unless I am mistaken, handed in their resignations. These are the criticisms which they inevitably draw down on their heads by stooping to make imputations as to men whose services to the country should put them above reach of anything of the kind. Within the last few months two of the leaders of Sinn Féin appeared, in the course of a few weeks--the one as plaintiff, the other as defendant--represented by a Tory counsel, in the Four Courts in Dublin, before a member of a foreign judiciary, which on their fundamental axiom should be taboo. The reason is to be found, perhaps, in the fact that they have not yet devised a means by which attachment and committal for contempt of their proposed amateur tribunals will be made effectual. The method by which the resolutions of the National Council are to be carried into effect has not yet been explained, nor have the means by which they will acquire a sanction in so far as their breach will involve the offender in a punishment. We have yet to learn what guarantee there is that the consuls in foreign parts, whom they propose to establish and maintain by voluntary subscription, will be given any facilities by the countries in which they are stationed, without which their presence in those foreign countries would be of no service whatever.