It was inevitable that Ireland should form the most prominent topic in the Debate on the Address, because the country had scarcely recovered from the tale of horror which had been unfolded by those who were tracking the murderers of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke to their lairs. On the 13th of January seventeen men were arrested in Dublin, and on the 20th they were, with three others, charged with conspiring to murder Government officials. For the most part they were artisans of the inferior order, but one, James Carey, was a builder and contractor, and a member of the Dublin Town Council. Under the pressure of examination two of these men, Farrell and Kavanagh, turned informers. Carey, finding that other members of the gang were going to save their necks, offered to betray the conspiracy of which he had been the guiding organiser. From his evidence, it appeared that after Mr. Forster had put all the popular leaders of the Irish people in gaol, a band of desperadoes, called “the Invincibles,” was formed for the purpose of “making history,” by “removing obnoxious Irish officials.” Though an attempt was made to show that the “Invincibles” were agents of the Land League, the only evidence in favour of this supposition rested on a statement which Carey admitted he had made. Two emissaries from America furnished the “Invincibles” with their funds, and Carey said that he thought they “perhaps” got the money from the Land League. He also said that the knives used for the Phœnix Park murders were delivered in Ireland by a woman, whom he took to be Mrs. Frank Byrne, wife of a Land League official. When, however, he was confronted with Mrs. Byrne he could not identify her. It is only just to add that the diary of Mullett, one of the accused, was full of expressions of scorn for the constitutional Home Rule agitators. We may therefore safely infer that after Mr. Forster had suppressed the Land League and put its chiefs in prison, what happened in Ireland is what has happened in every country. For open agitation were substituted secret societies, and midnight assassins took the place of constitutional leaders. The conspirators appear to have long dogged Mr. Forster’s steps, but failed to get a chance of killing him. They had no desire to attack Lord Frederick Cavendish; indeed, till he was pointed out to them, they did not know him by sight. He perished on the 6th of May because he defended his companion, Mr. Burke, who had been marked for “removal.” Carey was the man who had given the signal for the advance of the murderers, and he was also base enough afterwards, at a meeting of the Home Manufacturers’ Association, to propose that a vote of condolence should be sent to Lady Frederick Cavendish. The end of it all was that five of the conspirators, Brady, Curley, Fagan, Caffrey, and Kelly, were hanged. Delaney, Fitzharris, and Mullett were sent to penal servitude for life, and the others to penal servitude for various terms.