[88] An admirer of Mr. Gladstone naively writes in the _Westminster Review_: “During the six years of Tory repression and Tory refusal of remedial measures, they were as mild as doves and comparatively silent in Parliament, because they knew that the Tories would strike with despotic severity and with exceptional laws; but from the moment the magnanimous and friendly Gladstone came into power ... they excited the excitable Irish people to such a degree against this friendly Government, that there were perpetrated a long run of cruel and brutal outrages, &c.” (_Westminster Review_, October, 1883.) CHAPTER XXIV. BLUNDER AND PLUNDER. I have already shown the utter failure of the prophecies of your Free Trade Prophets, now let me show the failure of the prophecies of your Right Hon’ble Friends with regard to the Land Act of 1881, and ask if such lamentable want of discrimination is fitting in one pretending to be an administrator. _PROPHECY._ _FULFILMENT._ Mr. Gladstone, in 1880, scouted Judge Flannagan, 1883:-- the warning that there would “The rents are so well secured be no bidders for land, after the that the property ought to bring Land Act had been passed, and thirty years’ purchase.” he fixed the value of land at twenty-seven years’ purchase. The owner:-- “Three years ago I could have sold the property for £1,775.”