The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1880-03-16 00:00:00

prat Con* (Exiling.

THE ELECTION NIANIFF-STOES.

Like the Sphinx of Egypt was Earl Beaconsfield in his
utterance to the Duke of Marlborough, for—to say
nothing of the oddity of the language,—the state-
ments and insinuations therein seem to have been,
like the Cerium's description of the camel, evolved
from the writer's inner consciousness, so utterly
Impossible is it to fit then, into any existing_ state of
facts, or any facts that have existed. The Earl
appears, like another peer of his Cabinet, to have
given the reins to his imagination to such an extent
that ordinary people cannot tell where he is driven,
and, as in the case of Lord Salisbury, we are left to
wonder with Pilate's question on our lire. The
dangers with which the Earl tries to scare us remind
us of the Monster which Frankenstein raised for his
own ends, but which terrified the raiser, or they are
like the hideous sights horrifying the victim of
deliriums tremens, for they are invisible to those
around. Sir Stafford Northcote, instead of being full
of terror as is the Earl, practically pooh-poohs the
alarmist notions of his chief, and hopes for cessation of
war's alarms and for better times. In the light of Sir
Stafford's address the letter of the Earl becomes more
than ever a series of puzzles which the mind busied
with realities is tempted to serve as Lord Dundreary
did what he thought too hard to be understood. We
might indeed turn the Earl's letter into a conundrum
and Five it up; but MO does not the Marquis of
IlartinFton, who attacks the mysteries with a
detenuinati..n to penetrate them. He succeeds in •
series of demonstrations, showing that the true
answer to each ,d the Beaconsfield puzzles is the
contemptuous one—" Which is absurd ;" but the
Marquis labours rather at the demonstration, and
by the time we have struggled through the eighth
long paragraph, the feeling is that the solution,
though complete, has been tedious. But the slight
disappointment felt at the efforts of the Peers is more
than pensated for when that master of debate,
Mr. Gladstone, conies forward, llis apology for the
weight of years was never less needed, for the "old
man eloquent" has renewed his youth, in casting aside
that perilous longwindedness, anti with grace and
owe, as well as power, he imitates not Lord Harting'
ton's patient attempt at unravelling the tangled web,
but with a few strokes brushes it from the corner, and
exhibits it, not only ugly, but contemptible,—a
spider's dirty web.

Perhaps the best illustration of Lord iisrtington's
style is the cool reference to the groat job, of which
the Government were about to become either the
victims or the perpetrators. The London Water Bill,
which would have thrown away somewhere about as
much as the Premier threw into the Suez Canal, is
thus mentioned :
"The measure of the capacity of the Government for
practical legislation has been recently illustrated by the
fate of the measure introduced by the Horne Secretary for
the water supply of London. The very fact of the dissolution
having been postponed to the middle of the session, when
It might with equal convenience have taken place at the
commencement of the year, furnishes a proof that the
legislative duties of Parliament are a matter of no concern
in the view of the Government."

Finance is never a strong branch of what the Tory
Government try to pass for bu4iness. That about
49,500,000 should be quietly proposed as the
remuneration for property worth about .C 20,000,000
and which, with the fullest allowances, could not be
appraised higher than £15,000,000, is only • specimen
of the incapacity for saving for which the Tories ate
notorious. Another instance may be cited in the
Budget arrangements, wherein the usual reduction of
the National Debt is thrown aside, and anarnwnalated
debt of about £8,000,000 is to be "lonz drawn out"
. . .

tilTiSiVi. So damaging is this matter 4 finance that
Sir Stafford Northcote has gone back to the past, and
. _ _

quoted the cost of the Crimean war, in the hope of
throwing his own Government's espenditore into the
shade. But this is to be said for the Crimean war—it
did the work. The great foe of Britain and of liberty,
all the Conservatives from Earl Beaconsfield to the
smallest Jingo, admit, was and is Russia. The Liberals
aasent,—with this difference, that it is not the Russian
people who are their foes, but Russian
the Russian combination f oligarchy and despotism
which works on the passions of its subjects, and sends
them out to slay and be slain, such a combination of
oligarchy and despotism as Hebrew Toryism threatens
us with now. But the Crimean war hurled back the
Russian armies from Moklo-Wallachia, pulverised the
fortress f aggression, Sebastopol, created a new
nation and state in Romnania, and f orced., nue,da "to
retreat far back from the Pnith into the middle of
Bessarabia. Beaconsfield s blustering may only have
spent a few millions; but they are all wasted, Russia
has, in Europe, regained the line of the Pruth,
overawed Roumania almost into a vassal state, has
eatablished her outpost in a New South Russia the
Bulgaria f to-day, has regained ascendancy over
Turkey as greatly as ever she had, and has so increased
that ascendancy that the rotten state, once our ally,
insults England ; in Asia this Russian foe of liberty has
acquired the great fortress of Kars. The whole set of
comparisons shows that it is true as ever that
the Tories know thcy cannot economise, and therefore

they seldom or never try they fancy they can spend,
awl .1 they "go it blind,' and when aware f their
incapacity, and painfully conscious they have alienated
their allies, they are afraid to stand against a real
danger, they revenge themselves for being beaten by a
foe their own size, upon little antagonbibt, goading
them into enemies for the purpose. A number ,d con.
questa they may have, to supplement their ludicrous
" Peace with 11“nour " but these trophies consist of
African chiefs assailed by aggressive war, while others
cannot appear in the trimnphal procession, having been
quieted with dynamite. hut the recital ,d Tory wars
and their results grow wearbsone, and we leave to
time to reveal the truth alsoit Afghanistan, only
remarking that there they seem to he multiplying
enemies instead of gaining allies.