The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1880-04-13 00:00:00

3 Drat &Intl Exingo.

DORCHESTER, TUESDAY, APRIL 13, I‘4llll

TORY MIJ D DLit DOM.

Lest week we called attention to the awful muddle
Into which some benighted writer on the Tory organ'
had staggered when attempting to explain the result of
the contest et Shaftesbury. We say "Tory," for we
shall not intuit a large number of eendble Dorchester
gentleman, whom politics differ from ours, by dignify.
Lag the muddled prhst with the title of Conservative,
geeing that its blindness and blundering has been
denounced and bewailed to us by consistent and con.
wientions Conservatives, who laugh at its extrava-
gance and mourn over the exhibition it makes and the
contempt into which it would drag them if it could.
The Tory paper furious at the glorious victories
which had already been won by the Liberal party,
first bespattered Shaftesbury as of old hardly as good as
Sodom and Gomorrah, without in its rage-blindoees
Perceiving that it was in the bad old times that Shaftes-
bury returned • Conservative ; and then it was forced
to claim for Shaftesbury advanced intelligence and
education, while it bad not the candour to admit the
logical sequence of its discoverke—namely that intelli-
gence and education are favourable to Liberalism,
renewed Shaftesbury returning a Liberal. And, as to
the violent invasion of the emancipated town by • Tory
mob, which gathered from foreign parts, it. disapproval
of the murderous conduct was of • roseweter quality,
although that violence actually resulted in the injury
of three constables, and the besieging of Mr. Glyn and
his supporters in the Town Hall, where they remained
for hours in peril of their lives. The Tory fisx now
tries to discredit the Dorchester Liberals. Says the
Tory organ, of the oratory on Fordington Green and
elsewhere—" The working man was represented as
b&ng tyrannised over by his minders in the social
scale, and he (the working man) was held up to him-
self as the
_paragon of honesty and all the cardinal
virtues." Barefaced as such assertions are, they are
capable of absolute proof or disproof. and we challenge
the reckless writer to show, either from the remarks
of Captain Greville or of his supporters, one sentence
of amertion either that the working man is being
tyrannised over by his superiors, or on the other band
that he was held up to himself he a paragon. To the
proof, writer, or for ever after bear the reproach.
Thom the furious penman, blindly turning against the
Liberal party rage which might naturally have been
inspired by the Tory squibs, puts on record
his own absurdity in this style,—" The most scar.
stone attacks were made on the Conservative
candidate, the most wretched doggrel, which it
Is almost even a libel to call rhyme, was scribbled
stuff that would have disgraced the muse of Mill-street."
The learned world must be deeply indebted to the
Tory who has discovered in his researches and intro-
duced to the world under his special care • new Mum
—her of Mill-street. But, leaving the writer with
this female previously unknown to fame, we proceed
to oak whether indeed this wretched doggerel was
&nibbled as he says for the purpose of "insulting the
Conservative candidate," We go further than the
Tory writer and assert not only that it is almost •
libel to call it rhyme, but that the very idea of sup-
posing it to be rhyme at all could only have entered
such • head as that possessed by the man who likened
Shaftesbury to Sodom and Gomorrah. The question
Is—on which aide was the stuff written; and though it
Is, like the evidence in certain cases, almost unfit for
publication, we will for the sake of enquiry give it
room. Thus commenced the squib that opened the
paper war :
' 'Teas in the month of March
Old Dizzy bold and brave,
Dissolved the present Parliament,
And to the country came."
This really is a Tory and not a Liberal squib, for
here is neither an assault on the Conservative
candidate nor an approach to rhyme; it le /3esome-
fieklian all over, consistent only in its shams.
Shall we try again for something that may show an
Insult to the Conservatives? Horeb another verse :
" Heed not old Gladstone's cry:
Belt sell you neck and crop,
And Grooving and his crew
Will do their best to help"
So we have perceptible throughout the same tine Tory
hand, scribbling out such exhortations as
"Back up old Dizzy and his men."
"Young Brymer. he's your friend.-
For a wearisome length of ungrammatical verses, the
" oonstitutionalistn" of which may commend itself to
such writers as those on the Tory organ' but the
rhyme and reason of which would be denied even by
any boy, if he had spent his hours at that excellent
institution the Dorchester Night School, to which we
recommend the writer to go. True, the hand ia these
vCreee appears to be rather shaky, perhaps from that
mysterious combined influence known as "Beer and
Bible," for after using such low expressions as "off his
chump," which he manages to rhyme with an equally
vulgar
u one—" get the hemp," he next Iseults us by
to rhyme "coat' and "shocked," and bursts
out with sham indignation and absurd breach of
grammar in
"Where your High Church principles r
However the whole mass of this first squib is to 0
absurd, insolent, and libellous, to reproduce—only,—
and till, hi the fact that the Tory writer has failed to
grasp,—it attacked not Mt Codscreative tel Me Libtral
sick. After its astounding blunder, the Tory organ
had. better rub its eyes, and endeavour to stand
upright and look about, for at present its guesses are
like those of an unMilful player in blindman s buff, and
only result in its being sent to the right-about amid
the uncontrollable laughter of friends, and the amuse-
ment of those who pity it too much to be its foes.

WHAT CAUSED THE ELECTION ROW.
When party feeling is so intensely excited as it is
about the disturbance on polling day, remarks by any
of the Liberals may have little chance of being listeaed
to by the Conservatives. We are contest, therefore,
at present, to refer those who wish to discover the
real cause of the row, to the columns of that Tory
organ, the D.,rta Chro,licl.., when it aims, not so muc
at h
produzing an inflammatory "leader," as at chroni-
cling what actually took place. There is a duplicity,
or more thAn duplicity, about the writing on that
paper, which enable. a cuim reader to discover by com-
parison the real truth. And it is to be first noted that
not a single art of violence is charged against the mob
in its report of what took place before noon. It emit*
generally there was "a repetition of rowdyism," says
the mob were "papaw( to go any lengths in the way
of violence ~" but not • single act of violence is
recorded. In fact it stated—" The progress of the poll
was, at the early part of the day, marked by • degree
of steadiness and order." So things, according to the
Tory report, seem to have proseeded well until the
following happened—we again quote the Tory organ
"At about nron the (onservatives announced the
state of the p lI to be al follows : Brymer (C), 292;
Greville (L). 13.. This statement sorely 'riled' the
Radical party."
After this plain statement el, en in the Cioso,ork
'Alumna, every truth-teller must wish that the attempt
at a "10•161' had been based OU the reports furnished
by their own people and for the publication of which
the head of the Chroniat staff is responsible. The
unfounded statements—that no Liberal attempted to
stay the tumult, Ac., ars not saved by Latin assistance
from the stigma they deserve, for we personally
witnessed attempts to quiet those who strove to tear
down the insolent "State of the Poll ; " and these
attempts were successful in many cases, for men whom
we saw at first furious were induced to moderate their
violence. In other cases the mob were diverted for a
time to other subjects. But the whole of the violence
I. but a comment on the bad policy which has no long
maintained special temptations for the poor, and which
seeks to justify their being kept in darkness and weak.
nese, and to prevent them from enjoying those
advantages which would maks them good member, of
the State.

THE LIBERAL VICTORY.
By the middle of last week there was no longer any
doubt respecting the complete triumph of the Liberal
party in the General Election. It was clear then that
She simple result of the political contest must be the
reversal of the Conservative victory of 1874. Just
about AN largo a majority as Lord Beaconsfield's party
obtained then had the Liberals won back. Liar.
fag the Irish Home Rule members out of account, as
SWUM to be clone by general consent in estimating the
strength of parties, there is a solid and substantial
majority= the Liberal side, which ought to be effective
to maintain in power a Ministry of that party for five
or six years. The seats won in the boroughs would,
of themselves, have furnished only small party
majority; for the greater portion of this number was
required merely to produce the numerical equilibrium
of parties. But when the balance was once attained,
and even a small Liberal preponierance secured, by
the result of the borough elections, the very generally
unexpected revulsion of political feeling in the counties
soon put the crown to the edifice of the Liberal majority.
Every one mat then gained from the Conservative side,
and added to the Liberal, palpably and obviously
counted as two in the latter's majority ; and when the
number of these gains exceeded 'my, it became
clear that there must be a Liberal majority in the new
Parliament, represented by at least the arithmetical
number which expresses the years of Mr. Gladstone's
Ws. With respect to Mr. Gladstone's Government in
1874, we never could exactly understand what were
the faults charged against that Ministry, except that
its reforming energy WAS excessive, that it was too
economical in financial matters, and that it had lived
too long. The incoming party must be prepared for
the same sort of attrition or wearing-off of popularity,
U 11111.4 it can conciliate the country by a more than
ordiamily successful and at the same time inoffensive
conduat of public affairs. If the new Ministry desire
to escape the usual fate of effete Cabinets after a few
years of oificial life, they must make up their minds
to the carrying out, and not merely the exhibition, of
ec exceptional p intim' programme.