The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1884-08-16 00:00:00

CONSERVATIVE DEMONSTRATION AT
MANCHESrER.

The expected counter-demonstration of the Con
servatives to the great meeting of Liberals at Man-
chester a fortnight ago took place on Saturday
afternoon in the Pomona-gardens, in that city. The
audiences were of similar dimensions as a whole, for if
the Conservative meeting was rather less closely
packed than the Liberals had been in the principal
place of meeting, the Pomona Palace, yet the
number attending the " overflow " meeting in the
Agricultural-hall, besides two others in the open air,
appeared to be as much larger as might have been
expected from the more favourable weather, the Con-
servative gathering having the benefit of sunshine
interrupted only by one smart shower. Admission
was free, by ticket, only a limited number of seats
being paid for, and the meeting was swelled by a large
representation of the Conservative associations of
different towns in Lancashire and Cheshire. The
meeting was announced "as one " to protest against
the dictation of the caucus, and to support the
demand of the House of Lords for a complete Reform
Bill." A very warm reception was given bah to
Lord Salisbury and to Lord Randolph Churchill, who
were the principal speakers, and also to Sir R. Cross,
Sir M. Hicks-Beach, and others, who accompanied
them to the meeting. Sir R. Cross, having taken the
chair at the Palace mooking, opened the proceedings
by calling upon Mr. W. Touchstone to present a
number of addresses to Lord Salisbury. Mr.
Touchstone advanced to the front of the platform,
holding in his arms a great number of addresses.
They numbered, he said, 174, and were from clubs
and associations in Lancashire. He read only one of
them, viz., that of the Conservative Association of
South-East Lancashire (Manchester Division), as
follows : •

"To the Most Noble the Marquis of Salisbury-,
&c.—My Lord,—We, the Conservative Associa-
tion of Manchester, desire to offer your -lordship a
sincere and hearty welcome, and to assure you of the
continued loyalty of the Conservative party in Lanca-
shire to yourself as its distinguished leader. At a
time when every sinister art is being tried to throw
discredit upon the House of Lords, for its patriotic
conduct in preventing an unfair manipulation of the
constituencies, your lordship has championed the
cause of fairness with unflinching courage and energy;
what you have dune has the unswerving adherence
of the party, and we trust that in the autumn
session nothing will induce the House of Lords
r to depart from its demand for a complete Reform
Bill. While we entirely endorse the support
, which the House of Lords has given to the
principle of the Franchise Bill, we as completely re-
pudiate that it is the wish of the constituencies that
, menace and coercion should be applied to Parliament
—pressure—whose patent motive is to force a Redis-
tribution Bill upon the country framed entirely in the
interests of Liberal party managers. We also desire
to express our entire concurrence in the criticism
which your lordship has on several occasions passed
upon the foreign and colonial policy of the Govern-
ment, which has reduced the prestige and power of
England to a lower point than they nave reached for
many years; and we deem it most fortunate that the
time is at hand when the matter lutist be remitted to
a tribunal in whose judgment we have every confidence,
namely, the constituencies. We shall then hope to
again welcome your lordship in Lancashire, not as the
leader of her Majesty's Opposition, but as the Prime
Minister of England.' -- -
Lord Salisbury; who was received with great enthu-
siasm, said: Ladies and Gentlemen, I am heartily
glad to receive this kind welcome from so large, so
enormous an assembly, because the cause which I am
representing here is the cause of freedom and consti-
tutional order. I wish it were possible that some of
her Majesty's Government could be here to witness
this great assembly. I believe that the numbers
assembled for the present demonstration exceed any-
thing of which we have had experience before, and that
as many as 120,000 tickets had been taken for this de-
monstration. That number gives me great consolation,
because Mr. Chamberlain has been threatening at Bir-
mingham that he is going to march with 100,000 men
upon London. He says that he is a very mild man, and
that at present his temper is benignant, but that you
must not imagine he is less resolute than his fore-
fathers, who were prepared to march at the head of
100,000 men. I am very glad that if that should be
the case we shall be able to hang on his rear with a
Lancashire army of 'quite as large dimensions. Lan-
cashire has a special interest in this battle for re-
form. The present representation of Lancashire is
thirty - three members. If Lancashire had the
members which, according to a merely arithmetical
computation would fall to her share, she would
have sixty-three members. Therefore Mr. Chamber-
lain may be sure that if he goes to London at the
head of 100,000 men to prevent a good redistribution
scheme passing, Lancashire will be prepared to see
, that justice is done. And I do not think that when
he gets to London he will get a much better reception. '
Middlesex has even a greater interest than Lancashire
in the passing of a fair redistribution scheme. It has
now sixteen _members. It would have a rjght, under a
strict computation, to fifty-four members. So that I
am afraid that if Mr. Chamberlain undertakes this
' perilous march he will find a considerable force
in front of him as well as a considerable force behind
him, and I think, before the expedition is done, lie
will wish that he had confined himself to the safer
warfare of his peaceable colleague who only fights by
word of mouth. In the course of his further
remarks, his lordship said: In the year 1832,
when Parliament assembled— there were other
matters of importance cropped up later but
, when Parliament assembled there was absolutely
nothing which prevented them from addressing
themselves to this great question of reform. In
1883 the ground was so clear that Mr. Gladstone was
positively on the shores of the Mediterranean when
Parliament opened. During those two years there
was an entire vacancy, so that they might have intro-
duced this question of reform, and if they had done
so redistribution must have accompanied the enfran-
chisement; nothing could have prevented it. But
they pushed it off to the fourth year, and why did
they do so? Lord Hartington has told you in this
room, they wanted to put the House of Commons
and the House of Lords under compulsion, as lie
says. They wanted to arrange matters so that the
two Houses must pass whatever bill was put before
them, under pain of leaving the representative •
system in a condition of anomaly and
confusion. That was their object, and now
their one object is to avoid taking their conduct
before the tribunal to which they made their promises.
In 1880 they gave promise after promise. They held
out before you a splendid picture of taxes reduced, of
peace all over the world, of Ireland pacified, of trade
revivified. No one of those promises had been kept.
The expenditure has risen beyond any previous prece-
dent. They have shed blood like water—the blood of
naked savages with whom they were not able to state
the nature and character of their quarrel. They have
brought Ireland to that condition that it is a matter
of notoriety that whenever Parliament is dissolved,
seventy or eighty members will appear who are hos-
tile to every Government in England. And as to
trade, we hear of nothing but business carried on
at a loss, of banks that cannot put out their money,
and of the ships that are laid up by the hundred be-
cause they have not freights to carry. For
all these things, so far as they are answerable for
them, they would have to give an account to their
constituents. But their one object has been this—so
to alter the constituencies, either by having no re-
distribution scheme, or by having one exclusively in
their own interest, that they shall come before judges
who have no experience of their promises, who are
unacquainted with the issues, and that they will be
able to snatch a verdict which the old constituencies
would refuse to give. All this fight, cleverly as they
have got it up, is to prevent a dissolution before the
old constituencies. It is for that that they send their
Cabinet Ministers about the country, it is for that
that they employ the police to facilitate demonstrations
in London. The one, the increasing fear that occupies
their thoughts is, lest the time fixed by law shall run out
and they shall be obliged to come before the judges whom
they have deceived. And it is because the Houseof Lords
has refused to be a party to this manceuvre, because
they have stood in the way of the most shameless at-
tempt to jockey the public liberties that has been made
within our time—it is for that that they have
attempted to turn the whole question into a question
of slander against individual political opponents and a
question of agitation against the existence of the House
of Lords. Now I am not going to defend at length
the House of Lords against the statements which are
being made by the members for Birmingham. It is
not necessary, and it is not relevant. The point is
not how they got there, but have they done their
duty? But even assuming that the House of Lords
is an objectionable institution—which, of course, I do
not Admit for a moment—but assuming it, we did not
put ourselves there. We came there by the institutions
of the State, such as they have been handed don and
such as we find them; and are we, because a suspicion
or an objection is stated against the institutions as we
find;them,-=are we to refuse lc do our duty; are we to
-refuse as Englighmen andis wen to act up to what we
believe to be conscientiously our duty in thil matter,
to resist these unprinCipled and shameless manceuvres,
simply because we are threatened with an agitation
against the institution to which we belong? I am
sure that if a House of Lords was selected by random
in this room, and the men who composed it were told
to decide upon the case as it is presented to us they
would have said, "That way lies our duty, we will
follow it, and we will treat with indifference and con-
tempt the -menaces that are hurled against us." His
lordship concluded by referrinf.s, to the agitation
against the House of Lords, and said: Believe me,
this whole agitation is a mere red herring drawn
across our path. They only desire to distract your
attention from the matters which it is inconvenient
that you should consider, and I exhort you when the
time of election comes, as come it must very soon,
to remember other things besides this reform agita-
tion. Remember all those promises broken, remember
the line of English power retreating in every corner
of the world, remember the flag of English honour
and English prestige drooping upon every shore,
and in reference to these matters do not allow a false
issue to be put before you. Do not allow them to -
persuade you that the Lords is trying to pit their
privileges against the will of the people. The Lords
are trying to do nothing of the kind. The distinction
between, the position of the House of Lords and of

the House of Commons at this moment is this, thTe
the House of Lords is willing and anxious to submit
its decisions to the arbitrament of the, people, and
there is nothing that the House of Commons so much
dreads as that. We are asking you to exert your-
selves, and to fight a battle, not for the privileges of the
the Lords, which we hold to be a matter of secondary
importance, but for the great constitutional issues
that are involved in this struggle. We are asking you
to unite, and to organise, and to make great efforts in
defence of the sovereignty of the people and the freedom
of Parliament from compulsion. We are asking you
to determine that great legislative measures shall not
be pushed before Parliament under compulsion. We
are asking you to resolve that when great constitu-
tional issues are at stake they shall not be decided by
a Parliament which is already moribund, but that
they shall be referred to the arbitrament of the
people. We are asking you in the spirit of the
highest traditions of English liberty to unite with us,
and to unite with the House of Lords in resisting a
Minister who is afraid to submit his actions to the
judgment of the polling-booth, and a House of
Commons, the majority of which for such supreme
purposes as this has ceased to represent the people.
34PeChaplin, M.P., followed, and said that the agi-
tation ostensibly directed against the House of Lords
was the last desperate expedient of a defeated Minister
to conceal blunderings and failures.
Sir M. Hicks Beach said that the principle of the
tttension of the franchise to the counties was ad-
mitted by all parties, and the Radical party were at-
tacking the House of Lords for haying acted in
defence of the people.
Lord Randolph Churchill, speaking at a meeting in
the Agricultural Hall, went through a long list of
the failures in the Government policy, and said he
had no doubt that the British nation having to decide
between the House of Lords and its long centuries of
achievements on the one hand, and the follies and
failures of Mr. Gladstone's fours years of government
on the other, would award the honour and the victory
to those who defended the ancient liberties of our
race.