After One Hundred Days.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume III, Issue 344, 29 August 1889, Page 4

After One Hundred Days.

The Pall Mall Gazette, in an article entitled *• After a Hundred Days,” says:—“ To day is the one hundredth day of the Parnell Commission. The chief value of the Commlui'm has been the extent to which it has brought into clear relief the character of the Irish leaders. Intended to destroy them, the inquiry has succeeded in establishing to an altogether unexpected extent the reputation of the Parneliite chiefs. The proceedings on Tuesday and Wednesday are from some points of view the most interesting of all the hundred days, because Michael Davitt is in many ways the most interesting of all the Irish witnesses. A man of the loftiest patriotism, of great organising genius, of unflinching courage, of singular unselfishness, and of stainless honor —are such men so numerous in any land that we can afford to chain one of them like a beast to a stone cart, and compel him to labor like a slave, amid the convicted burglars and murderers of Dartmoor and Portland ? Think of how the world has dealt with this man, and then turn to what he has accomplished. An outcast from his birth, evicted when a child, driven even fron the door of the workhouse, put to labor when only nine years old, mutilated by machinery, which tore off his right arm when a mere child; that was the training of bis youth, the stern schooling of his early life. And for university career we gave him Old Bailey trial and sentence of penal servitude, shut him up in a convict prison for nearly eight years, and then, after releasing bim, again immured him in gaol for eighteen months. Once more we clapped him into gaol for three months; and now, through the agency of Queen's counsel, born with golden spoons in their mouths, and nurtured in all the luxury of English culture, we are putting bim to the question, imputing all manner of evil to him, and doing our best to hold him up to indignation and contempt. And with what result ? That the lone, mutilated man stands to-day immeasurably higher than all his persecutors. All round the world, whenever the English tongue is heard, there the name of Michael Davitt is known, whether for banning or for blessing, as that of the man who made Ireland to live once more.”