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 least a gratifying proof that his work has been appreciated, and that it has cast new lights upon the Irish problem. To the simple direction, "State nothing that you cannot stand by," he has been faithful even beyond our most sanguine hopes. A stranger in a strange land seeking information wherever it can be found, and compelled on many occasions to accept the statements made to him, may easily be led into error. It is to the credit of our Commissioner that he has withheld some of the most sensational stories retailed to him, because he had not an opportunity of verifying them in detail. The notorious Father Humphreys, of Tipperary, will not soon forget his experience of giving the lie to the _Gazette_; neither will those who organised an "indignation" meeting at Tuam be likely to congratulate themselves upon having stung our Commissioner into retaliation. It may be recalled as an illustration of the desperate efforts made to discredit him that after he had attended a Nationalist meeting at Dundalk he was denounced as a "liar" and a "pimp" because he had stated that he was invited to address the score of persons who had "met in their thousands" to shake the foundations of the British Empire. His assailants fiercely declared that he was not invited to speak; he was only informed that he might address the meeting if he desired to do so!