The milk of human kindness in the Irish blood appears, in short, to have gone sour, and in place of the old disposition to humor we have a tendency to cynicism and vituperative remark. And when an Irishman turns cynic or vituperator he takes a wonderful deal of beating, as witness the utterances in Parliament and elsewhere of that choice body of gentlemen known as the Irish Party, or the proceedings of the Dublin Corporation, or the lucubrations of the Irish press. A singular exhibition of this particular Irish weakness has quite lately been offered us by no less a person than Mr. Samuel M. Hussey, who, I believe, rather prides himself on having been described as the best abused man in Ireland. Of Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Hussey writes as follows: “If Napoleon was the scourge of Europe, Mr. Gladstone was the most malevolent imp of mischief that ever ruined any one country.… I heard him introduce the motion [The Land Act of 1881] in the House of Commons, and his speech was a truly marvelous feat of oratory. He was interrupted on all sides of the House, and in a speech of nearly five hours in length never once lost the thread of his discourse. As far as I could judge, he never, even by accident, let slip one word of truth. “To do them justice, the Irish Members gave such an exhibition of blackguardism as has no parallel on earth, though it earned but the mildest rebuke from their obsequious ally, Mr. Gladstone. “Mr. Gladstone considered that if you gave a scoundrel a vote it made him into a philanthropist, whereas events proved it made him an eager accessory of murder, outrage, and every other crime.” It is only fair to Mr. Hussey to say that he himself has received as good as he gives. For example, an Irish demagogue once treated him to the following: “Sam Hussey is a vulture with a broken beak, and he laid his voracious talons on the conscience of the voters. (Boos.) The ugly scowl of Sam Hussey came down upon them. He wanted to try the influence of his dark nature on the poor people. (Groans.) Where was the legitimate influence of such a man? Was it in the white terror he diffused? Was it not the espionage, the network of spies with which he surrounded his lands? He denied that a man who managed property had for that reason a shadow of a shade of influence to justify him in asking a tenant for his vote. What had they to thank him for?” A voice: “Rack rents.” “They knew the man from his boyhood, from his _gossoonhood_. He knew him when he began with a _collop_ of sheep as his property in the world. (Laughter.) Long before he got God’s mark on him. It was not the man’s fault but his misfortune that he got no education. (Laughter.) He had in that parish schoolmasters who could teach him grammar for the next ten years. The man was in fact a Uriah Heep among Kerry landlords.” (Cheers.)