THE IRISH QUESTION.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 293, 2 May 1889, Page 2

THE IRISH QUESTION.

London, April 30.

On the resumption of the sittings of the Commission, Mr Parnell will give evidence. It is expected that the proceedings will conclude in a month's time.

London, May 1. Mr Parnell has now been submitted to cross examination, but eo far nothing detrimental to him has been elicited—it was rather the other way. |

The last numbers of the Pall Mall Gazette just received by the mail are naturally full of Piggott the perjurer, his exposure, and his tragic end. In its issue of March 7, the Pall Mall has an article entitled ‘ Dead,’ which, for power and pathos, is a most remarkable literary effort. It runs as follows “So the tragic element has come in at last as it always does in tbe Irish drama! Never does any great incident in Irish history close without exacting life. Sooner or later the Fates claim their victim, and there is a smudge of blood on every page in Irish history. If the Special Commission had closed without murder, suicide or execution, it would have been an exception without precedent. As it is the rule remains unbroken, and the suicide of Richard Piggott at Madrid rounds off the story of the forged letters in accordance with the grim tradition of Irish life. When Talbot the informar was shot, Richard Piggott wrote :— 1 The odious character of the murdered man, and his unparellad duplicity, caused many moderate politicians to look upon his fate as an example of political justice which was not out of harmony with the fitness of things.' The same verdict will probably be passed upon the wretched man who is now again, to use hia own phrase, 'face to face with a Judge more merciful and forgiving than he found on earth.' Probably those to whom Richard Pigott is merely a name will dismiss the news with a satisfactory 1 serve him right,' But to those of us who saw the man day after day in the witness box, to whom he is aa real and living a human being as any human being, the report of that revolver shot awakens sombre memories. There was something terrible about the sight of Piggott at bay, confronted with the sceptres of all hie half-forgotten sins rising up to confront him before the eight of all men. It was like an authentic prefiguring of the Day of Judgment, when 1 whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light, and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the house tops.’ For twenty long years that man, with the resourceful cunning of a fox, and with no more moral scruple than a rat, had fought a desperate and losing battle. And there, between the Commissioners and Sir Charles Bussell, he stood fast in the deadly toils, the long struggle closing in utter and irremediable ruin, his name a byword and reproach, and his memory a stench in the nostrils of men.”