The mendacity of some of its leaders is shameless and sickening, and still more sickening is the complete indifference with which this mendacity is regarded in Ireland." It is the spirit, too, of a letter which I received not long ago from the west of Ireland, in which my correspondent quoted the bearer of one of the most distinguished of Irish names, and a strong "Home Ruler," as saying to him, "These Nationalists are stripping Irishmen as bare of moral sense as the Bushmen of South Africa." This very day I find in one of the leading Nationalist journals here letters from Mr.Davitt, Mr.O'Leary, and Mr.Taylor himself, which convict that journal of making last week a statement about Mr.Taylor absolutely untrue, and, so far as appears, absolutely without the shadow of a foundation.

These letters throw such a curious light on passing events here at this moment that I shall preserve them.[28] The statement to which they refer was thus put in the journal which made it: "We have absolute reason to know that when the last Coercion Act was in full swing this pure-souled and disinterested patriot (Mr.John F.Taylor) begged for, received, and accepted a very petty Crown Prosecutorship under a Coercion Government.

As was wittily said at the time, He sold his principles, not for a mess of pottage, but for the stick that stirred the mess." This is no assertion "upon hearsay"-- no publication of a rumour or report.

It is an assertion made, not upon belief even, but upon a claim of "absolute knowledge." Yet to-day, in the same journal, I find Mr.Taylor declaring this statement, made upon a claim of "absolute knowledge," to be "absolutely untrue," and appealing in support of this declaration to Mr.Walker, the host of Lord Riand Mr.Morley, and to The M'Dermot, Q.C., a conspicuous Home Ruler; to which Mr.Davitt adds: "Mr.Taylor, on my advice, declined the Crown Prosecutorship for King's County, a post afterwards applied for by, and granted to, a near relative of one of the most prominent members of the Irish Party,"-- meaning Mr.Luke Dillon, a cousin of Mr.John Dillon, M.P.! We had much interesting conversation last night about the relations of the Irish leaders here with public and party questions in America, as to which I find Mr.O'Leary unusually well and accurately informed.
I am sorry that I must get off to-morrow into Mayo to see Lord Lucan's country there, for I should have been particularly pleased to look more closely with Mr.Rolleston into the intellectual revolt against "Parnellism" and its methods, of which his attitude and that of his friends here is an unmistakable symptom.

As he tersely puts it, he sees "no hope in Irish politics, except a reformation of the League, a return to the principles of Thomas Davis." The lines for a reformation or transformation of the League, as it now exists, appear to have been laid down in the original constitution of the body.