The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-02-09 00:00:00

THE VOTE OF CREDIT.

(From Monday's Times.)

We are requested to publish the following letter from
Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice to Lord Hartington :

"32, St. James's-place, Feb 2.
"My dear Hartingtou, —The personal courtesy
which you always show to your followers makes me
venture to address to you the following lines in refer-
ence to the pending debate in Parliament. There ap-
pears now to be no doubt that an armistice and
preliminaries of peace have been concluded between
Russia and Turkey. War, therefore, is at an end—
at least for the immediate future. It seems to me
that this incident has materially modified the
situation under which the Government presented to
us a demand for a Vote of Credit. This alteration
in the position of affairs cannot but also modify
the issues practically involved in the discussion now
going on in the of House Commons; and the question
naturally arises whether, now that a subsidence has
taken plp.ce in the acuteness of the political situation of
Europe, .similar subsidence might not take place in the
angry differences which at a moment of grave complica-
tion in foreign affairs are distracting Parliament and the
nation. The withdrawal of both the Amendment and the
Vote of Credit could now surely be agreed to without
loss of dignity to either of the contending parties, and
the strength which the nation would thereby gain in
the face of Europe by the termination of this parlia-
mentary struggle would, I cannot help thinking, be
infinitely greater than any power which the Ministry
might draw from securing a party majority, however
large.—l am, my dear Hartington, yours truly,
EDMUND FITSMAURICE."

Earl Fortescue has addressed the following letter to tile
Treasurer of the North Devon Liberal Registration Associa-
tion

"Brooke's Club, Feb. 2, 1878.

"Dear Sir,—My valued friend the Liberal mem-
ber for North Devon tells me that, along with a
majority of the Liberal members of the House
of Commons he intends to gni:Tort Mr. Forster's reso-
lution; but, as I pretty plainly intimated in the speech
which the Duke of Argyll unexpectedly compelled
me to make on Thursday in the House of Lords,
I have the strongest conviction that it is the duty
of every Englishmen to waive party differences
at this crisis, so as to enable the Queen's Government
to speak with confidence and authority on behalf of
England in the councils of Europe. Under these cir-
cumstances, I beg through you, their Treasurer, to
tender to the Committee of the North Devon Liberal
Registration Association my resignation of the chair-
manship of that body.
"1 do so, not because I feel the least shaken in my
attachment to those great principles of civil, religious,
and commercial freedom which you know at what
cost in North Devon—and old members could tell you
how indefatigably, while my health permitted, in
the House of Commons—l have consistently
sep-
ported for more than forty years, from my Under-
graduate days to the present hour. But lam first
an Englishman, then a Liberal; and it is as an English-
man that I desire to furnish the present Government,
as I should any other Government holding office
under our thoroughly Constitutional Queen, with the
means of providing the naval and military force de-
clared by them on their responsibility to be requisite
in the present state of the Eastern Question. lam
happy to know that in this I by no means stand alone
among consistent Liberals of many years standing.
"It is very painful, of course, to feel bound to take
such a step, but when the path of duty seems clear, I
must not shrink from following it.—l remain, dear
Sir, yours faithfully, " FORTESCIJE.
"W. G. Smyth, Esq., South liolt,on."