The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1887-10-29 00:00:00

POLITICS OF THE RECESS

LORD ABERDEEN AT MA.NCHESTER.
Lord Aberdeen has been entert.ined at dinner 14,
the Manchester Reform Club, and afterwards ad-
dressell the members, insisting that, however im-
portal* were the other subjects on -which the Liberal
party desired to deal, the Irish Home question must.
first be settled.
LORD R. CHURCHILL ON RETRENCHMENT.
Depntations have waited upon Lord Randolph
Chura4ill at Chester-le-Etreet, where his lordship
attervrards addressed a meeting of the Conservative
Club. He said they must identify the cause of the
Union with good administration and progressive
legislation. Nothing was more likely to win the
support of the people than retrenchment in public ex-
penditure.

LORD R. CHURCHILL AT NEWCASTLE.
Lord R. Churchill, speaking in Newcastle-on-Tyne
on Saturday, at a meeting called by the local Conser-
vative Association, replied to several charges made by
Mr. Gladstone against the Unionist party and the
Irish Executive. The ex-Premier's accusation that
the Unionist party had recourse to coercion in haste
and on insufficient grounds, the noble lord denied, and
in support of this refutation referred to the history of
cosrcive laws. He declared as false the charge that
the Unionist party pledged themselves not to resort
to extreme measures. Criticising the attitude assumed
by the right hon. gentleman towards the police of the
United Kingdom, he attributed this onslaught upon
the constabulary to the alliance of Mr. Gladstone
and his followers with the Revolutionary party,
whose views had infected him and them.
His lordship continued : If for the future
political changes were not to be effected by consti-
tutional agitation, but by disorder, public disturbance,
and resistance to the forms of the law, then farewell—
s long farewell—to all the commercial progress to all
hope and prospect of revived trade and property in
England. What was the secret of the colossal wealth
and power of the British Empire? It was that for
the space of 200 years revolutionary forces had been
kept under by the Government, supported by public
opinion; but the moment those revolutionary forces
escaped from control, and had reason to believe that
any important political party would tolerate excuse or
justify the disorder they cause% then we might be
certain that the sun of British prosperity, wealth, and
commercial greatness would rapidly decline.
(Cheers.) This would affect the masses more than
the classes; capital coald take to its wings and fly
away. But what would become of the working
classes when disorder and anarchy had taken the
place of order and of law.? Were the democracy of
England quick enough to discern and guard against
it? He personally was startled and alarmed at
the adhesion which the majority of the electors of the
North of England had given to the cause of the re-
peal of the Union. England, surrounded by colossal
States, with mighty armies, was not invulnerable, her
resources were not inexhaustible, and there was no
certainty that the Empire would endure for ever and
for aye. Other empires as great had waxed, waned,
and faded away. If it was the fate of busy streets,
crowded marts, and the bustling factories of Britain
to become as deserted as the ruins of Thebes, as
silent and mournful as the courts and palaces of the
Moguls, history would unerringly declare that the
knell of our glory and might was earliest tolled when
the people relaxed the firm grip on the noble prin-
ciples of Union—(cheers)—and feebly and fatally
foliated the broad and downward path of separa-
tion when popular • cowardice was substituted
for civic courage; when revolution, treason,
and sedition was accepted under the pretexts of
concession, conciliation, and the rights of man; when
order, law. and constituted authority had ceased to be
the watchword of the community, and were no
longer bulwarks of the State. (Cheers.) It might
not be wise to probe the secrets of the future, but if
such anticipations as he had sketched, which were
founded upon the mutability of human affairs, and
the spirit of decay that appeared to pervade the all-
human arrangements, were not to wander far from
actual eventuality, he was confident that it would
be recorded that the Unionist Party had struggled
long, hard, and to the end to avert the doom, and
that the Unionist Party would be innocent of all
responsibility for the calamity which would have
shocked mankind and changed the world itself. (Loud
cheers.)
On the motion of Sir Mathew White Ridley,
seconded by Lord Zetland, a vote of confidence in the
Government was passed.
Later in the evening Lord Randolph Churchill pre-
sented the prizes to the most successful students in
the Science and Art School connected with Dr.
Rutherford's Bath-lane Institution in Newcastle.
Lord R. Churchill, in addressing the science and
art students, said there seemed no lack of advance in
any department of art except architecture. The ex-
cessive building of gothic edifices was one of the curses
of the age. Any person building gothic structures for
civil purposes ought to be tried for his life. When he
passed from public buildings to private, and looked at
villa residences which surrounded our great towns he
found no great excellence of architecture, whereas if
there was any country in the world whose climate
made it essential that these buildings should be
graceful and alluring to the eye and cheering to the
mind it was England. There were several openings
in the domain of science of which young men might
tato advantage. One wee tho applioation of elec-
tricity to the purposes of common lire. In the work
of the steam engine the waste of power was
enormous.