The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1887-03-12 00:00:00

TEE PREMIER ON THE IRISH
QUESTION:

The inaugural dinner of the National Conservative
Club, Pall Mall, London, was held at Willis's Rooms
on Saturday night, when the Duke of Abercorn pre-
sided. He was supported by the Marquis of Salis-
bury, the Lord Cbancellor, Mr. Raikes (Postmaster.
General), the Marquis of Lothian, Earl Cadogan,
Lord Brabourne, the Attorney-General (Sir R.
Webster, Q.C.), Lieutenant-General Sir F. W. Fitz-
Wygram, M.P., Lord Colville of Culross, Colonel
Hughes-Hallett, M.P., Sir James McGatel Hogg,
M.P., E. S. Norris, M.P., &c. Lord Salisbury, on
rising to reply to the toast of her Majesty's Ministers,
proposed by the Chairman, was loudly cheered. His
lordship said he gratefully accepted the first greetings
of that new Conservative Society, of which he hoped
that that beginning would be the emblem and sign of
its future strength. The Duke of Abercorn had said
very justly their position was not a bed of roses.
He had referred briefly to foreign affairs, and
dark and gloomy as had been the pro-
spect of affairs abroad, the change, so far
as there had been a change—was uniformly in the
right direction. He did not affect to depreciate the
importance of the questions by which nations were
still divided, or the sinister impoit of those vast
armaments which they rivalled each other in produc-
ing, but in spite of those ominous symptoms it seemed
to him that the cause of peace was constantly grow-
ing, and the prospects of peace more brilliant than
they were some few weeks ago. (Cheers.) For them,
however, the politics of the moment were summarised
in the name of Ireland—(hear, hear)—and in this con-
nection he could not forget that to-day they had
parted from one of the ab est, most loyal, wisest and
most resolute of colleagues. He possessed all the
qualities necessary for solving the problems that had
beset statesmen for so many generations. His singular
fertility of resource, firmness, and resolution, which
never degenerated into partisanship; his judg-
ment and resolute loyalty, his wide knowledge of
the subject with which he had to deal all
fitted him singularly for the post which he occupied.
He had gone from the Ministry, not through any dif-
ference of opinion for there never was a minister who
inspired greater trust, his physical capacity had I:e‘en
reduced by the zeal and courage which he had de-
voted to the service of the country. (Cheers.) No
greater disaster could have happened to the Govern-
ment—that was a small matter—but it was a great
disaster to the country, but be (Lord Salisbury)
hoped that it would only be a temporary disafeer, and
that in the early future he might again work with him
in the cause they loved so well. (Hear, hear.) The
Irish question, as they looked at it, seemed to them
like an evil dream. It was one of those nightmares
where a danger or a horror pressed upon one, and one
felt that he ought to be able to dissipate it, but there
was something that fettered the limbs and paralysed
the energieP. He could easily imagine that many
would say that such an observation did not become
his mouth, and that it was the business of the
Ministers of the Crown to aissipate that horror.
In the old days, when there was a famine in
Turkey, they flung the Grand Vizier's head into the
street. (Laughter.) In the present critical state of
affairs, which were disgraceful to law and disgraceful
to the cmstitution, some impatience towards Ministers
of the Crown must be expected. But they must re-
member that they were ministers not of a despotic
but of a constitutional State. They were bound to
walk strictly within the limits of the law, and if that
law was not suitable to the circumstances of the case
-they were, not the authority by which it could be
altered. In Ireland the machinery of social govern-
ment had broken down in one essential point. The
great object of society was that wrongs should be re-
dressed and crimes punished. But that could only be
done by the actions of the courts of law and the action
of the courts of law in Ireland bad broken down
because Irish jurymen, or a sufficient number of
them, did not sympathise with the law, and
would not give their aid in carrying it
out. Trial by jury . had broken down in
Ireland. The whole machine worked well ex-
cept one essential wheel. That wheel refused
to move, and before society could be restored to its
healthy condition that wheel must either be refitted
or dispensed with. (Loud cheers.) But then they
would say here was a case for alteration, and why
was the alteration not made? Attention had been
called to the disgraceful scenes enacted nightly in the
neighbourhood of Westminster Hall. They knew
that the machinery for legislation was impeded by
an obstacle which their fathers knew not, and if it
had existed earlier, assuredly Parliament would never
have acquired the reputation it had obtained in the
world. If obstruction merely hindered legislation it
might be borne, but the essential powers of the exe-
cutive government by which society was kept together
were placed in danger, and until the House of Com-
mons had devised measures to meet the new dangers
it was impossible to restore the efficiency of the social
machine now arrested in Ireland, or give back that
confidence without which industry could not act. He was
not using the language of despair or helplessness. It
appeared to him that in this country were smitten
with the terror of an inevitable fate, which it was
useless to resist, and that they must bow to the in-
evitable. That was a belief by which nations were
undone. Evil was never inevitable if we had the
courage to struggle against it. The feeling arose
from an idea that it was the principle of nationality
that was being resisted, and that this principle had
achieved many triumphs during the present century.
But even if it were a question of nationality he would
say the duty of this country was not altered. We had
to provide for our own security. We could not plant
a hostile community on our flank. But he denied
that the principle of nationality had anything to do
with it. When addressing educated audiences in
-this country the Irish leaders used the jargon of
nationality and nations struggling to be free. In
Ireland, amongst their own people, however, they
appealed to motives far more common .and less
heroic. TO teach the debtor how he shall not pay his
creditors—that was their heroic gospel. (Hear,
hear, and laughter.) Looking abroad- to those
people who had achieved - their liberty during
recent years, they found their strength ex-
pression of sentiments of nationality, they would find
that in Poland, Greece, Italy, and the Tyrol contend-
ing against the French, and in Belgium or any other
country that had achieved its liberty and showed the
qualities necessary to enable a nation to go alone.
They had never dealt in a wholesale system of frauda-
lent bankruptcy. They would have despised such
aids, and they would never have acted in a manner
inconsistent with the most rudimentary morality,
and which was a danger to civilisation, and under
which industry and prosperity would be parched and
shrivelled away. He did not deny the existence of
great evils, though he would not undertake to say how
far the law, or changes in the law, were capable of
remedying them. He believed the remedial measures
of a very far-reaching tendency were strongly called
for by the conditions of things. (Cheers.) But the
first thing was to restore respect for the law. The
law must be master, or no remedial measure would
be regarded legislative reliefs, instead of tending to
quiet, would only aggravate the disorder, so long as
it was believed that they had been extorted by
agitation—(hear, hear)--so long as it was believed
that more measures of the same kind could be wrung
from the Legislature of the country. They were en-
gaged upon a struggle, on the issue of which would
depend whether their existence as a great Empire
wr:s to continue or no—(hear, hear)—and they must
address themselves to the conflict. Their national
fault was that too much softness had crept into their
councils. They imagined that great national dangers
could be conjured by a plentiful administration of
platitudes and rose-water. (Laughter,) The age
was not an age for such soft sentiment as that. A
stern duty would be imposed upon the men, whoever
they were, who had to rule in the times that came
before them; and that duty they would not escape
except under pain of betraying the most sacred trusts
that could be reposed in them. (Cheers.) If they
irmild bring to that duty the patience and tenacity
which were chawteriatic of the English character,
thy wojlviciseused in westoring to their sister country
the prospetity which horl long been f% etrattger to her,
(Loud °boom)

IMPERIAL PARLIAMENT.
NtlE A.,7r, • s FOR THE ARMY.
In the °xi* LCaDS, March 7, Lord Ribbles-
dale called attention to the state of horse-breeding kid
the horse supply, especially in relation to the militair;
and commercial requirements of the country.—LOrk
Harris could net hold out any hope of a grant in air':
being given to ,agricultural societies for encouraging
the breed of horses, as the noble lord had suggested.
He thought, however, that it might be possible to give
some encouragement to horse-breeding by sending corn-
petent officers to the yeomanry cavalry meetings with
the view of purchasing on the spot such desirable animsls
as maybe obtainable —The Duke of Cambridge regard e
foreign competition as an important element in consider-
ing the question of purchases for cavalry purposes, and
expressed himself as favourable to buying horses at two
instead of four years of age, to be kept on grass lani
until they were fit for army service —After some
further conversation, Lord Ribblesdale intimated that
he should introduce a bill on the subject, and the
matter then dropped. —Their lordships rose at 'five
minutes to six o'clock.