The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1888-03-31 00:00:00

GOVERNMENT AND EMELAUnX

IMPORTANT SPEECH BY THE CHIEF
SECRETARY.

Under the auspices of the Lancashire and Cheshire
Conservative Working Men's Federation, a county
demonstration was held at the Drill Hall, Stalybridge,
on Saturday night, at which an address was delivered
by Mr. A. J. Balfour, who said that the past year had
been an unfortunate one for political prophets.
(Laughter.) Many prophets had been heard,
most of them unfavourable to the Unionist
Government, but the Unionist Government had
fattened upon them—(laughter)—and with each
new prophecy of coming evil they had seemed to
gain strength and prosperity, until at this moment
it would be difficult to conceive that this
was the same Government, constituted of the
same members, whose speedy demise was so con-
fidently foreseen by all the Liberal quidnuncs. The
first thing that was to turn the Government out of
orfice was what was called the Coercion Bill, and as a
matter of fact they carried it through all its stages by
triumphant majorities, and at this moment it was
unquestionable law of the land. (Hear, hear, and
cheers.) Next they were told that if they passed the
bill they would never be able to put it in force.
(Laughter.) Whatever else might be said against
them, they had not failed to vindicate the law of the
land. (Hear, hear, and cheers.) Again they were
told that if they passed and put in force the Coercion
Bill, the democracy of England would rise against
them and hurl them indignantly from office. Had
they done so? Had the democracy of Eng-
land risen against them? Not a bit of
it. It had been predicted that as soon as they at-
tempted to bring in any legislation for England or for
Scotland, the great Unionist party would be dis-
solved to its constituent atoms; that the Government
would be deserted by the allies whe had fought
shoulder to shoulder with them in so many a good
light; and that by their dissensions they should hand
over the affairs of the Empire to the Gladstonian-
Parnellite alliance, and that prophecy he thought was
as little likely to be fulfilled as the others whose
absurdity he had already shown, and he confessed he
was wholly unable to see even the smallest rift
in the late events, or even the smallest cloud
upon the horizon, which could presage the coming
storm. Ho did not pretend to say that so far during
the present session great legislative changes had
been accomplished, but they had done something
(Hear, hear.) Mr. Goschen had, so far as it was
possible to foresee, successfully attempted a task
which had been attempted in vain by some of the
most distinguished of his predecessors, and he had
carried through a gigantic operation with regard to the
National Debt the immediate effects of which would
be not only an enormous saving to the taxpayers of
this country, but, in his opinion, be a vast stimula-
tion of the resources of the country. (Hear, hear.)
Never again should they be told, as they had been
in the past, that they were inferior to their opponents
in their capacity for managing the national finances.
(Hear, hear, and cheers.) Then, again, his friend
Mr. Ritchie had put forward not merely the
outlines, but also the details, of one of the most
comprehensive, one of the most complicated, and
one of the most statesmanlike measures ever
put forward by any Minister. (Cheers.) The
prophets who had prophesied evil had proved
themselves false prophets, but, like other false
prophets, like other charlatans, they had attempted
to bring their own prophecies to a fulfilment by the
employment of illegitimate means. (Hear, hear.)
They had done their best to render every effort which
the Government had made for the benefit of Ireland
fruitless of any good result. (Hear, hear.) They had
talked of the cruelty and brutality of the Irish
Government until he almost began to think they
believed what they said. (Laughter.) The Staly-
bridge Radical Club two or three days ago had sent
him a resolution, in view of his approaching visit,
stating that the members of that club had very great
pleasure in expressing their great abhorrence of the
general methods he had adopted in governing Ireland.
(Laughter.) There was no reason why he, as a Conserva-
tive, should acquiesce in these accusations of brutality,
tyranny, and harshness, qualities which were to
the British mind most foreign. (Hear, hear.) Com-
pare the action of the present Government with the
action of Mr. Gladstone's Government between 1880
and 1885. What happened during the first five
months or so of Mr. Gladstone's Coercion Act? Under
the beneficent and humane rule of Mr. Gladstone and
Lord Spencer, 1114 persons were proceeded Against.
During a similar period of the harsh, brutal, and
cowardly Government condemned by the Stalybridge
Radical Club, only 628 persons, or very little more
than one-half, were proceeded against. During the
endless debates on the Criminal Law Bill last year
there was no topic more familiar to the mouths of the
Opposition; nothing on which Mr. Gladstone was
more anxious to dilate; nothing on which
Sir William Harcourt poured forth more of
those stores of unexpected legal learning
with which he was about to astonish both
friends and enemies— (laughter)—than the sub-
ject of the constitution or the creation of new crimes
by the Criminal Law Bill. (Hear, hear.) Lord
Spencer created two offences of a kind most dQ„ngerous
to the liberty of the subject. He and his colleagues
made it a crime in Ireland to be found under sus-
picious circumstances and rendered a man amenable
to imprisonment; therefore that was a tolerably
serious interference with the liberty of the subject, to
which there was nothing in the bill of the present
Government at all comparable. While the number of
persons proceeded against for new offences during
the first five months or so of Lord Spencer's adminis-
tration of the Crimes Act was no less than 500, the pre-
sent Government had proceeded against no more than 44
persons for new offences. (Cheers.) From the talk
of Radicals, it might be supposed that resident magis-
trates were a Tory invention. As a matter of fact,
resident magistrates were first appointed in Ireland
by one of the best Liberal administrations that had
existed in Ireland for the last fifty years. They had
had the administration of every Crimes Act that had
been passed since they were appointed. The men
who were actually working the Crimes Act at this
moment were substantially the same as worked under
the beneficent and humane rule of Mr. Gladstone
and Lord Spencer. (Cheers.) As regarded the ad-
ministration of the law of conspiracy, he found that
the number of persons prosecuted under the Govern-
ment Act for conspiracy had been 628, and only 22
had sentences from which they could have appealed,
and in no single ease had the decision of a resident
magistrate been reversed on appeal by a distin-
guished and competent lawyer irremovable by the
Executive Government. The present Government were
charged with interfering with the liberty of the press
in Ireland. He denied the charge, and said that no
responsible statesman of eminence or position had
dared to bring that accusation seriously forward in
the House of Commons where it could be answered.
(Cheers.) The Irish press abused the freedom it un-
doubtedly enjoyed, and indulged in license during his
administration, and no one from one end of Ireland to
the other had been attacked for the mere expression of
opinion. He had been accused of many things, some of
them of a most ridiculous and unkind nature,
especially in connection with the imprisonment of
Mr. Wilfrid Blunt. But he need hardly come before
them to refute the malignant and stupid report that
his object was to murder Mr. Blunt in prison. It was
one of the most stupid falsehoods that had ever been
uttered. It was only necessary for him (Mr. Balfour)
at present to say that in so far as he was accused of
having at any time, at any place, or to any person,
said a word which could legitimately be interpreted
as meaning that he desired the death of any single
Irish representative or of any other human being, the
thing was a grotesque and ridiculous falsehood. (Loud
cheers.) Certain alleged iniquities perpetrated
by the Irish Government had undergone many trans-
mutations and transformations. (Hear, hear.) It
was said that men or women had been put in prison
for cheering Mr. Gladstone, or women for intimidat-
ing the police, or little boys for selling United
Ireland, or for not selling United Ireland. Of these
fables different versions had appeared, and they
became the most picturesque for repetition.
(Laughter.) Referring to Mr. O'Brien's speech at
Birmingham, in which that gentleman said -an un-
warrantable attempt had been made to complicate the
question of Home Rule with a question of political
morality, and he urged his hearers to bear in mind
that the issue before the country at this moment was
not merely whether England, Scotland, and Ireland
should form one United Kingdom, or whether
the government of the kingdom was or was
not to be carried on upon principles which had
commended themselves to every country and to every
phase of society, no matter to what political party
they might have belonged, the issue was the same.
(Loud cheers.) Replying to the vote of confidence,
Mr. 13alfour said that under the firm administration of
the law which the Government had inaugurated in
Ireland, confidence was steadily and not slowly grola;-
ing up. True liberty was growing up. Their fellow
countrymen across St. George' E Channel were being
relieved of the worst of yokes—the yokes of an irre-
sponsible association, having at its command almost
unlimited power of punishment and which acted in-
dependently of the state of the law or of morality.
(Cheers.)