The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1886-06-19 00:00:00

MR. GLADSTONE'S MANIFESTO.

Mr. Gladstone late issued a Manifesto to his con-
Itittients. Ho says
Gentlemen—ln consequence of the defeat of the
Bill for the better government of Ireland, the Ministry
have advised, and her Majesty has been pleased to
sanction, a dissolution of Parliament for the decision
by the nation of the gravest, and likewise the sim-
plest, istue which has been submitted to it for half a
century.
It is only a sense of the gravity of this issue which
induces me, at a period of life when Nature .cries
aloud for repose, to seek, after sitting in thirteen
Parliaments, a seat in a fourteenth, and with this
view to solicit for the fifth time the honour of your
con fidence.
At the last election I endeavoured in-my addresses
and speeches to impress upon you that a great crisis
had arrived in the affairs of Ireland.
Weak as the late Government was for ordinary
purposes it had great advantage for dealing with this
crisis. A comprehensive measure proceeding from
them would have received warm and extensive sup-
port from within the Liberal party. It would pro-
bably have closed the Irish controversy within the
present session, and have left the Parliament of 1885
free to prosecute the now stagnant work of ordinary
legislation, with the multitude of questions that it in-
cludes.
My earnest hope was to support the late Cabinet
in such a course of policy.
On the 26th of last January the opposite policy of
coercion was declared to have been the choice of the
Government, Lord Carnarvon alone refusing to share
in it. _

The Irish question was thus placed in the fore-
ground to the exclusion of every other. The hour,
as all felt, was come, and tha only point remaining to
determine was the manner in which it should be dealt
with.

In my judgment the proposal of coercion was not
justified by the facts, and was doomed to a certain
and disgraceful failure. Some method of governing
Ireland other than coercion ought, as I thought, to
be, sought for and might be found. I therefore
vied with regret the fall of the late Cabinet, and
when summoned by her Majesty to form a new one I
undertook it on the basis of an anti-coercion policy;
with the fullest explanation to those whose aid I
sought as colleagues when I proposed to examine
whether it might not be possible to grant to Ireland
a domestic legislature under conditions such as to
maintain the honour and consolidate the unity of the
Empire.
The Cabinet was formed, and the work was at once
put in band.
You will now, gentlemen, clearly understand how
and why it is that the affairs of Ireland have, now for
the first time, thrust aside every other subject and
adjourned our hopes of useful and progressive legis-
lation. As a question of the first necessities of social
order it forced itself into the van. The lato Govern-
ment, right in giving it that place, were, as we
thought, wrong in their manner of treating it. It was
our absolute duty on taking Government, if we did
not adopt their method, to propose another. Thus,
gentlemen, it is that this great and simple issue has
come upon you, and demands your decision: will you
govern Ireland by coercion, or will you let her manage
her own affairs. _

_
To debate in this address this or that detail of the
lately defeated bills would only be to disguise this
issue; and would be as futile as to discuss the halting,
stumbling, ever-shifting, ever-vanishing projects of
the intermediate class, which have proceeded from
Seceding Liberals,
Two clear, positive, intelligible plans are before the
world. There is the plan of the Government and
there is the plan of Lord Salisbury. Our plan is that
Ireland should, under well-considered conditions,
transact her own affairs; his plan is to ask Parlia-
ment for new repressive laws, and to enforce them
resolutely for 20 years, at the end of which time, he
assures us, Ireland will be fit to accept any gifts in
the way of local government or of repeal of the coer-
cion laws that you may wish to give her.
I leave this daring project to speak for itself, in its
unadorned simplicity, and I turn to the proposed
policy of the Government.
Our opponents, gentlemen, whether Tories or
seceders, have assumed the r,;;me of Unionists. I
deny their title to it. In intelltion, indeed, we are all
Unionists alike, but the Union which they refuse to
modify is in its present shape a paper Union, obtained
by force and fraud, and never sanctioned or accepted
by the Irish nation. They are not Unionists, but
paper Unionists. True union is to be tested by the
sentiments ot the human beings united. Tried by
this criterion, we have less union between,. Great
hritain and Ireland now than we had under the set-
tlement of 1782. - -

Enfranchised Ireland, gentlemen, asks, through her
lawful representatives, for a revival of her domestic
legislature, not on the face of it an innovating but a
restorative proposal.
She urges with truth that the centralisation of the
Parliaments has been the division of the peoples. But
she recognises the fact that the Union, lawlessly as it
was obtained, cannot and ought not to be repealed.
She is content to receive her legislature in a form
divested of prerogatives which might have impaired
Imperial interests, and better adapted than the settle-
ment of 1782 to secure to her the regular control of
her own afrei,x*

She has not repelled, but has welcomed stipulations
for the protection of the minority. To such provisions
we have given, and shall give careful heed, but I trust
that Scotland vill condemn the attempts so singularly
made to import into this controversy the venomous
element of religious bigotry. Let us take warning
from the deplorable riots of Belfast and some other
places in the North.
Among the benefits, gentlemen, which I anticipate
from your acceptance of our policy are these:
The consolidation of the united Empire, and a
great addition to its strength.
The stoppage of a heavy, constant, and demoralising
waste of the public treasure. _ . .

The abatement and gradual extinction of ignoble
feuds in Ireland, and that development of her re-
sources which experience shows to be tile natural
consequence of free and orderly government.
The redemption of the honour of Great Britain
from a stigma fastened upon her almost from time
immemorial, in respect of Ireland, by the judgment
of the whole civilised world.

And, lastly, the restoration of Parliament to its
dignity and efficiency, and the regular progress of the
business of the country.
Well, gentlemen, the first question now put to you
is, " Huw shall Ireland be governed ?" There is
another question behind it, and involved in it: "How
are England and Scotland to be governed? You know
how, for the last six years especially, the affairs of
England and Scotland have been impeded, and your
Imperial Parliament discredited and disabled. All
his happened while Nationalists were but a small
minority of Irish members without support from so
much as a handful of members not Irish. Now they
approach 90, and are entitled to say, "We are speak-
ing the views of the Irish nation.' It is impossible
to deal with this subject by half-measures. They
are strong ir their numbers, strong in the British
support which has:brought 313 members to vote for
their country, and strongest of all in the sense of being
right.
But, gentlemen, we have done our part. The rest
remains with you, the electors of the oountry. May
you be enabled to see through, and to cast away all
delusions, to refuse the evil and to choose the good.