By 1886 every arguement on either side of the Irish case had ...

By 1886 every arguement on either side of the Irish case had been stated, confuted, reiterated, and shredded to the last syllable.

But still Mr Gladstone was there, always ready to fan the tiring ardour of his followers with a moral emotion which may seem to us to be strangely in excess of the occasion.

Surely it is possible to be a religious man and an intelligent man, and yet not deem it necessary to enter into the chamber of the soul, the recesses of the heart, yea, the presence of Almighty God, when the question at issue is whether in the last Irish tussle, the policeman or the Ribbonman hit the other first; be it in politics or in poetry, few English optics are fine enough to determine whether a pale light in the western sky is the birth of a star or the dust above a Dublin street fight.