The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1887-12-10 00:00:00

_
MR. GLADSTONE ON THE WHIGS AND
IRELAND.

Mr. Gladstone has addressed the following letter to
Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice in regard to his recent
speech at Old Cumnock, in Ayrshire :—" My dear
Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice,—Arnold Morley tells me
that he thinks you will not mind my writing to you
about your recent speech. I, therefore, freely vent
what has been in my mind ever since I read it. It
was, I thought, precisely and pre-eminently the
speech that was wanted, made by one who was in all
respects peculiarly the man to make it. In my view,
Ireland is the heading of a bright chapter in the
history, not only of the Liberals, but especially of the
Whigs. It was a noble thing on the part of Burke and
Fitzailliam, and the other secedcrs from Fox, that
not all their horror of France could make them un-
true to Ireland. The Whig party after the schism
remained, for Irish purposes, unbroken, and were
right in each one of the various stages through which
the question had to pass—right in the endeavour
frustrated by Pitt and the ascendancy men, to work
the Grattan Parliament; right in his opposition to
eha Union when it was shamelessly forced on Ireland;
right in saying by the mouth of Fox, that so huge a
measure must have an unprejudiced and a full trial
when it had once been effected, and when no man
could undertake to say positively that Ireland might
not come, as Scotland had come, to make it her own
by adoption; right, probably, when Grattan gave his
provisional sanction to coercion as the necessary
sequel to the Union; right, certainly, when Lord
Grey and Lord Althorp proposed further coercion
in 1883, when they had done, and were doing, for
Ireland in so many ways all which at the time they
could, and when no Minister was in a condition to say
constitutionally that the sense of the Irish people de-
manded self-government; and, finally, right was a
cruelly crippled remnant of their leading class, en-
thusiastically supported from first to last by a large
portion of the nation, in listening to the constitutional
demand of Ireland by their representatives in 1885,
and in recognising after three generations of men had
passed away that union with coercion—in other words,
government by force—had been tried all but too fully,
and had entirely failed. All this I have said to show
that I do not use words without meaning when I say
we want a little Whig treatment of the Irish question.
But for me there is another aspect of your argument
in which it is not less acceptable and important. As
the chi 4 part of the Whig peers and aristocracy have
severed themselves on this question from the bulk of the
Liberal party,it has not unnaturally followed that the
Whigs have been at a discount among us. What I
fear and do think a very great and probable evil, due
entirely to the so-called Liberal Unionists, is the
narrowing of the Liberal party, which has hitherto
been so broad. In a speech at Richmond in 1866,
John Mill said well 'We are a Broad Church.'
Liberal Unionism has strongly tended to make us a
narrow Church, and to break up the old and invaluable
habit of Liberal England, which looked to a Liberal
aristocracy and a Liberal leisure class az the natural,
and therefore the best, leaders of the Liberal move-
ment. Thus it was that classes and masses were
united. I look with apprehension and dislike on
whatever disunites them. And next to its demerit on
the ground of injustice to Ireland andlmperial danger
comes this second demerit—that it has in a disastrous
manner and degree severed the mass of our great and
truly national party. This controversy—and even the
recollection of it—will gradually die away with the
certain triumph of Home Rule. But will the ranks
which have been divided easily close up again? All
the better, Toryism will reply, if they do not. But
is this a pleasant or a natural answer for Liberal
Unionism to make? It has been a Liberal, not a
Tory aristocracy, which has supplied the country
with the necessary guidance in the great works of the
nineteenth century. We want to keep the great
organ in good working order, and I for one think
that the narrowing of the party by the severance or
reduction of one wing is also the crippling of the
party. It is, in my opinion, by action like yours, and
in particular by reasoning like yours, if at all, that
this great mischief can be averted. All this slims
itself up in a vote of thanks to you. It might, you
may say, have been tendered without a speech. But
I wished to make it clear that in my mind at least
it was no merely ceremonious vote, but an acknow-
ledgment of solid and great service in-a great crisis
to a great cause.—Believe me, most faithfully yours.
W. E. GLIIISTONE."
THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY AT