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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 4

[miscellaneous paragraphs]

It would be out of place in these pages to chronicle the recent conduct of Mr Parnell, which has caused the great breach in the Home Bule party. It is nearly two years since, that in commenting on the Times-Parnell business, we expressed certain views regarding the Irish leader (and gave reasons for the same) which were contrary to those of nearly every newspaper in the Colony, and in regard to which we received several private letters of expostulation from subscribers, one from so far away as London. By a certain newspaper in Napier, we were fiercely attacked. We took no notice of this at the time; but may be excused for remarking that now, when Mr Parnell is down, this same newspaper is jumping upon him six times a week with its heaviest boots. Eighteen months ago all the resources of vituperation were found insufficient to denounce The Times; now they are turned in the opposite direction. Mr Parnell's private character— his ingratitude to the veteran statesman who sacrificed so much on his account; his dealings with trust funds—are criticized in a hundred New Zealand papers with a wealth of invective that after all is not very creditable to the writers. We refused to join in the chorus against The Times, but plainly expressed our opinion that the statements in « Parnellism and Crime, » were in the main correct. We asserted the belief—which we still hold—that Pigott was induced by the offer of a bribe (which was not paid) by certain parties in Parnell's interest, to obtain the publication of forgeries in The Times to discredit a very compromising genuine document already published in fac-simile. As a matter, however, which comes within our own scope, we direct attention to a few late telegrams, quoted elsewhere, illustrative of the kind of liberty which the Irish press might expect if Mr Parnell had his own way. Under so-called British coercion, the Irish press, so long as it did not directly incite to murder, had full licence— now that the Irish patriots have fallen out among themselves, they have found it necessary to obtain police assistance to enable their newspapers to be published at all, and even to secure themselves from personal violence!