IRISH AFFAIRS.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 188, 28 August 1888, Page 2

IRISH AFFAIRS.

EARL SPENCER AND HOME RULE THE PARNELL ENQUIRY. PROSECUTIONS FOR TAKING PART IN PROCLAIMED MEETINGS. London, Aug. 25. Earl Spencer denies that he has abjured the principles of Home Rule. It has been decided to conduct the proceedings in the Times-Parnell Commission in Public. Government have decided to prosecute Redmond Bros., for taking part in the meeting which had been proclaimed. MR. O'DONNELL’S CAREER AND MOTIVES. A London correspondent writes as follows: — I suppose few men have made more enemies and a greater mess of life generally than the plaintiff in the late abortive case against the Times. Looking at him now—broken down and hollow cheeked, a physical if not moral wreck—it is difficult to believe he ever had a career worth mentioning. But he had. An old acquaintance assures me that at school and college O’Donnell was a brilliant lad, spoke well, wrote well, and worked well, and played as he worked. His physical strength and good looks were, like his ambition, remarkable ; and his early successes in all he undertook proved phenomenal. O’Donnell entered Parliament young, and immediately made his mark. Three things, however, brought him to grief—an insatiable hungering for notoriety, an inability to be true to anyone (even himself), and a fatal weakness for “ John Jameson’s best.” The latter failing, it is said, really injured him most, inasmuch as it led to his committing dangerous indiscretions, which more than once compromised Mr Parnell himself. Nominally O'Donnell abandoned the Parnellites ; in reality they turned him up. It wa« not till the man found he was no longer treated with confidence and as a responsible leader of his pary, that he rebelled. Rightly or wrongly the general impression afloat, with regard to O'Donnell’s foolish action against the Times, is that he brought it in the hope of forcing the Irish party to re-open their arms to him. One thing, at any rate, we do absolutely know. Up to noon on the first day of the trial, O'Donnell talked grtndly of going into the witness-box voluntarily to give evidence, but after some conversation with Mr Parnell, Mr Herbert Gladstone, and Mr T. P. O'Conner, it was resolved he should not do so unless Compelled. The costs of the trial the costs which Mr O’Donnell will have to pay, if he can), exceed £lO.OOO. The keep of the witnesses, which the Times brought over from Ireland alone exceeded £2OO a day. By the way, I hear several of the jury were for appending a rider to their verdict thanking the Times for its action in drawing attention to the apparent connection between Parnellism and crime.