The Sun.
London, England, 1867-10-11 00:00:00

PRIUF 4d.
STAMPED sd.

were sick of seeing the question trifled with. Almost
every elector, almost every reforming member of
Parliament, almost every member of the Liberal
party, felt that it was a crying shame that this
question should be played with so long. Deeply as
he regretted that there should be any difference be-
tween the Liberal party and its illustrious leader,
so far from its being a dishonest part that they
played in the last session—as had been charged
against them—it was the honest expression of their
determination that this question should be trifled
with no longer. For the first six weeks of the
session nothing could exceed the coolness and calm-
ness and patience with which Mr. Gladstone carried
out the views of his party, but he had to deal
with a wary antagonist, who won a victory not so
much over his opponents as over his own party,
which was utterly unexpected. When Mr. Disraeli
brought in his bill, and three members of the Ca-
binet seceded, everybody thought he would be left
in the lurch, but he fi!led up their places, and to
the astonishment of all be seemed to have the sup-
port of nearly all his party. That was a surprise to
the Liberal party. He was not going so far as to
say that that was the reason of the change in Mr,
Gladstone's tactics, but the coolness and calmness
which, up to that time, he had shown seemed to
leave him, and from that moment he seemed deter-
mined to depart from the line of policy which he
bad marked out, and in which he had obtained the
unanimous support of the Liberal party. That party
were determined to lick the bill into shape, and Mr.
Gladstone said it could not be licked into shape.
Mr. Grenfell did not believe the divergence between
Mr. Gladstone and the Liberal partyaVas more than
temporary,. and remarked that there were other
leaders in the Liberal party who took a far more im-
portant part in committee than Mr. Gladstone—
such as Mr. W. E. Forster, Mr. Hatton, who was
always ready to lure the Conservatives on to their
destruction ; Mr. John Bright—(cheers)—who was
better known for his passionate outpourings of elo-
quence, but who, on this occasion, condescended to
the humbler use of his debating powers, and dis-
played the most extraordinary gifts, alternating the
bitterest irony with the liveliest wit ; and there was
the pitiless logic of John Stuart Mill. (Applause.)
All these men came well to the front, and did their
part, as he hoped they would always do, in making
the measure as acceptable as possible to the Liberal
party at large. It must not be thought that the
question of reform was entirely closed. They hoped
that in the ensuing, or at all events in an early
session, it would be again before the house, when,
no longer having to contend with the extreme pre-
judices of the Conservative party, they would, if
the question was properly handled, find that party
as ready as in the past session to make large
concessions. In this they would look for the assist-
ance of Mr. Gladstone, as well as in the exten-
sion of the platform of the Liberal party.
Their platform had been a singularly narrow
one ; and there were many questions of ad-
ministrative reform to be dealt with which were of
the most vital importance, and foremost among
which was that of education. (Hear.) If the pre-
sent denominational system of education could not
be made sufficiently effective, the sooner they adopted
a wide system of undenominational education, pro-
vided for out of the rates, the better it would be for
the country. (Applause.) The people who had
shown the greatest amount of force in the past few
years had been those who had made the greatest pro-
gress in education. He referred to Prussia and the
United States. If that be so, was it possible that a
country so rich, so enlightened, so go-ahead as ours,
should pause in the path of education ? He was not
speaking of the education only of the working classes.
Education was of still greater importance to the
other classes, in whose education reform was needed
quite as much as in that of the working classes.
They had in this country magnificent institutions
for the higher classes in the Universities of Oxford
and Cambridge, but they were not universities or
places where persons who might show intellectua.
superiority, coming from whatever class they might
could find the means of developing that superiority

They did not find the greatest engineers, the greatest

doctors, came from the Universities of Oxford and
Cambridge. The duty they performed was simply
that of sending out, perhaps, two or three men in

the course of the year who became statesmen, and
there might be some successful lawyers amongst

those sent out trained in the universities, which

further educated 15,000 persons ; but that was not
what a university was meant for, and he hoped tha
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the time would come when the universities would be

nurseries of science, and leave off being the nurseries

of one profession, and that profession the Church.
(Hear.) Referring to the war administration, Mr.
Grenfell said he had had information, the accuracy

of which he had no reason to doubt, that the con•
fusion existing in that department was such that

in any large expedition, the same difficulty
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would occur as occurred at the commencement

of the Crimean war; and he believed this was
the opinion of those who were actually em-

ployed in that department. He believed now, when

they were only sending out a small expedition to
Abyssinia—the use of which he could not under-

stand—that the greatest confusion existed. There

were many other subjects requiring attention, among
them that of church and law reform, after Home

remarks upon which Mr. Grenfell referred to some

of the work of the past session not previously noticed

Among these was the confederation of the North

American colonies, the bill for which had been suc-

cessfully carried by Mr. Adderley, who, however,
had been unable to carry those reforms he so much
advocated when out of office, and to compel the

colonies to provide their own military expenditure,

but he had been obliged to take the bill of his pre-

decessor. The seals—of India had passed into the
hands of two secretaries uncler the present Govern-

ment, and the only change they made in the policy
of their predecessors was to grant to some of the
most extensive princes of India a sort of promise of
a reversion of their sovereignties, which had been
resisted by successive distinguished statesmen, and
which, he feared, would one day place this country
in a serious dilemma. Mr. Grenfell referred to the

growth of the non-intervention principles of Messrs.
Cobden and Bright, and the enunciation of his
approval of them by Lord Stanley before he took
office, and to the reversal of that adoption by his
lordship since he had been Foreign Secretary, as
evidenced by his course in the Spanish affair and in
the Abyssinian expedition. In reference to the
latter, he said he did not believe that any expedition
had ever been undertaken with greater carelessness,

with greater recklessness of consequences than this
expedition. If there ever was a case in which the
Opposition ought to league together to express what
they thought of a most reckless disregard of human
life, and of English lives, this Abyssinian expedition
was that case. (Applause.) Mr. Greufell went
on to speak of trades' unionism, which he said
was a subject upon which no public man had
a right to be silent. He believed the working
classes had exactly the same right to combine
that the masters had—(applause)—and he was

about to speak on the subject more particularly as
a political economist. There was no harm in
trades' unions as long as they were confined to the

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transaction of business with employers ; but if they
went beyond that, and became organisations to
force up wages, they violated the soundest laws of
political economy ; and if they raised wages they
would not raise the moral welfare of the working

classes, but they would drive the trade out of the
country. They must leave wages to be settled by
the laws of supply and demand, and they would

gain nothing by breaking those laws. The hon.
gentleman dwelt on this subject, and referred to the
late disclosures at the Sheffield and Manchester
Trades' Union inquiries, and said if he were a

working man he would feel it his duty to protest
against such a state of things existing anywhere.
(Applause.) After some further remarks on this