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

SIR GEORGE TREVELYAN AND THE

GOVERNMENT.

The Press Association is requested by Sir G. 0.
Trevelyan to state that he has received a great
number of letters referring to reports in the news-
papers that at the dinner at the Devonshire Club
Last week he stated that "the game of law and °l-der
was up in Ireland." It is, says Sir George Trevelyan,
unfortunate that reporters were not present since so
much attention has been called to what is supposed
to have been his speech. He therefore gives the
exact words of his speech, which are as follows
The point on which we are agreed—the point on
which, es far as I can see, we are in diametric oppo-
sition of Conservatives, is that the condition of
Ireland is past correctives and palliatives, and
that it should be treated radically and remedially.
The points on which we were disagreed we recoutained
within the two great bills of last Parliament, and, to
use the words of their author, those bills are now
dead, and dead and buried with them are, or should '
be, all bitter words that were spoken with regard to
them, and every regrettable action to which the elec-
tion gave rise. With regard to the further scheme '
for future relations between Great Britain and Ire-
land we have a clean sheet, and those of us who have
been endeavouring to write upon that sheet have at
any rate discovered this, that in the mind in which
the so-called sections of the Liberal party are, if we
cannot agree on our Irish policy as a united party,
and support it as a united party, and carry it out as
a united party, the leaders and prominent men in the
Liberal ranks will indeed be deeply responsible. If
the public spirit and personal magnanimity which we
have a right to ask from British public men do not fail,
if those to whom the destines of our great Empire are
entrusted look to facts and substances, instead of to
old worn out war cries of a general election which ii now
over, and which never should have taken place, the
breach in our ranks might be healed to-morrow, and
it is high time that it should. There is no party in
the wcrld which in the long run can stand the strain
of these bye-elections with regard to which members
of the same party take opposite action. The
reasons for desiring the reunion of the Liberal
party are so strong, that not only every good
Liberal, but every good Englishman should make
it his first object and first desire. The greatest
calamity which could befall the country is that the
party of progress should become extreme and sec-
tional. The glory of our party in the past was that
it was the party not of a class, nor of classes, but of
the nation. to quote the weighty words of Lord
Herschell at Manchester, You cannot afford to ex-
'elude from your ranks, and still less to exclude with
anger and contumely, those whose conviction on
points of detail are conscientious and clear, but fully,
reconeileable with yours, while on questions of prin-
ciple they are all at one with you: If I am asked
what I mean by saying that the Liberal party is
essentially united in principle, I answer first and
foremost that they are united in the belief that before
aey other question can be satisfactorily settled the
condition of Ireland must be dealt with. The course
of the Consen alive Government was quite plain
before them. They should have vigorously enforced
the law against the law-breakers, and they should
have placed on the table of the House the first thing
this session a scheme for the Government of Ireland
so large, thorougu, and comprehensive that they
might have been ujustified in representing it. as a
final settlement. But they did neither the one nor
the other. At the very outset of a renewal of the
disturbances they allowed the violence of the mob
to overcome the officers of the law, and from
that time the game of law and order was up in Ireland.
In Lord Spencer's day, when we had to contend with
agrarian violence, but:with more formidable outsets of
armed and half. disciplined Orange bodies to the num-
ber sometimes of a largish army, the preparations we
made and the orders we gave were such that for three
years no party of police or soldiers, whether they
numbered two or three constables or 1200 cavalry and
infantry, ever came back from the duty to which they
were told off repulsed and defeated. And the other
half of their opportunity—perhaps the most golden of
the two—they have let slip from their grasp. Instead
of bringing in a comprehensive and final scheme for
the future relations of Great Britain and Ireland their
only remedy for that portion of the situation is help-
less, non-possumus. The Irish question must remain
unsettled, and the peace and happiness of everyone
in Ireland must remain unsettled, too, until we have
the outward and visible sign of the agreement which
I am sati.fied already exists in the minds of our lead-
ing Literals,. in the shape; of rs 'oarefullf thittared.
scheme Ins the` goVernmettof
moot of the laud qu.ation Tory different lines from
Lord Aellbournes