The Sun.
London, England, 1868-11-16 00:00:00

MR. GLADSTONE IN LANCASHIRE.

Apropos of the allegations that the "screw" was being
applied on his behalf, Mr. Gladstone spoke on Satur•
day on open voting as compared with the ballot.
"The legitimate use of influence," said he, "of
station, by pure persuasion and without penal cense-
quences, is a very natural use ; but when those that are
in high station and those that are possessed of property
combine together and issue circulars in which they call
upon all their men to place themselves in a band for the
purpose of using that influence, then, gentlemen, we
require no scholar or pedant to translate this into
plain English—we know perfectly well what it means
—it means coercion ; and we have seen the conse-
quences of that coercion in the municipal election
at Blackburn; and now the mayor of that town is
obliged to provide for its peace during the par-
liamentary election by calling in the military power.
For my part, gentlemen, I have always desired, and with
it hoped, that we might continue, through the good sense
of the community, and through the respect of the different
classes, if it can be done with freedom, to exercise the
practice of open voting. I don't wish to resort to
secret voting; I hope we may still be able to exercise
the franchise in peace openly ; but this I say in the
presence of you all— if we are to have this combination
of masters and milloVvners and managers, on the
Conservative side, for the purpose of exercising a syste-
matic and organised influence to prevent freedom of elec-
tion—that if these measures are taken, and are to be fol-
lowed up by such proceedings as those at Blackburn,
where operatives ofLiberal sentiments, and even their wives
and daughters, have been turned out of employment and
deprived of the means of livelihood on account of their
Liberal opinions—then I say, at whatever hazard and cost
we shall be compelled to secure freedom of election.
And if the day comes when the question reaches the
point—l trust it may not come—when it reaches the
point that it can only be bysecrecy of voting, it will not
be you who have brought that about, but it will have
have been brought about by our so-called Conservative oppo-
nents, who, wanting the principles that should lead them to
respect the freedom of their neighbour just as much as
they value their own, will have done in this case the very
thing they have done in a hundred of other cases, namely,
by violence and folly precipitated the very result which
it had been their object, their heart's desire, to obviate
and defeat." He had a brush with Mr. Adderley, who had
claimed for the Conservative party that it had
prevented revolution. " Mr. Adderley says that to deter-
mine to which of these parties you owe the most would be
much the same as if a man were to strike a balance of
obligations between the leg which he put forward in
walking and the one on which the centre of gravity rested.
"Mr. Adderley," said Mr. Gladstone,"is of opinion that each
human being—and the human being was once defined by
the logicians as a two-legged animal without feathers--he
is of opinion that each human being is endowed with two
legs, one of which he puts forward in walking and the
other which he always keeps behind, and that these two
legs are the representatives of the two political parties,
after the manner of what is called the goose-step, or after
the manner of another illustration which I well recollect.
I don't know whether any of you are acquainted with
the song—it is not fashionable at the present moment—
which I think is called ' The Cork Leg ;' but for
the benefit of those who are not acquainted with
it I will remind you that the narrative and' moral of
the song turn upon this—that a man having but one
natural leg remaining provides himself with a leg of
cork, and when the leg of cork is attached it becomes so
intolerably active it is continually running away with
him, and the natural leg in vain does what it can to get
bim down to a moderate pace. That is Mr. Adderley's
view of the relation of the two parties." Mr. Gladstone
spoke very strongly against putting the Queen in the
front of the battle. " There is '' 'ng," be said,
"by which a Government can more effectually compro-
mise the highest public interests than by ceasing to
maintain Ministerial responsibility, and there is no
greater breach of duty that a Minister can commit than
to forget the allegiance he owes to the Crown, in
reference to maintaining what is in effect one of the
most essential principles of the Constitution, namely,
that the Crown shall be shielded from personal responsi-
bility, so that the Queen may not have to answer for the
measures of a bad Administration. The practice of
tendering to the Queen not one advice, but two, and leaving
it to the Queen to choose between them, and then coming
down to Parliament and informing Parliament that the
Government have submitted these two alterna4
tives to her Majesty, and that her Majesty has
been pleased to choose one of them, is a serious
Conservative innovation. The man who does
that proves himself by doing it to be totally unfit to direct
for an hour the affairs of this country ; because, instead of
making himself responsible for what is done, and standing,
as it is his duty to stand, like a wall of adamant between
the people and the sovereign, he places the sovereign in the
front, he shelters himself behind her august personalty,
and if the result is favourable he is to take the
benefit ; if the result is odious, he is always able to say
Yes, it is true, but we tendered also the other advice,
which, if it had been accepted, would have been pros-
Derous.'"

Both at this meeting and at Wavertree Mr. Gladstone
complained that the Ministry had no policy. At Waver-
tree he exclaimed : " I say the Government have no
policy. They ought to have ; it is their duty to have,
If they have not got a policy, they ought not to be a
Government ; and I trust that whoever may constitute
the new Parliament, the first day when that Parliament
will meet will bring to the test the question whether a set
of men possessed of office are to continue to possess office,
with its authority and power, and to fail in its first duty—
namely, in having principles and plans of their own, and
fairly laying them before the country as the plans which
they, on the part of the Crown, think to be required by
the public interest." Mr. Gladstone forthwith proceeded
to shew that he had a policy. He answered seriatim the
questions put to him by the Morning Herald. The first
was, " What is to be done with the mor ey ? Mr.
Gladstone does not say." To this the Liberal leader re.
plied : " What I have stated is this, and every man with
a grain of sense inhishea,d knows perfectly, but it does not
suit certain parties to see it—l said this, that the
men who must determine that must know the social
and civil wants of Ireland, and where they most stand
in need of being met and replenished by the application
of new funds; they must be men in command of these
means of reformation and all the agencies in the State,
which it perfectly ,possible for thi Opposition to
possess, but which, on the contrary, every Government
must possess. We have said, and said it a hundred times,
but it does not signify if I had said it a million of
times it would not be a bit more effectual with people
determined not to hear it—we have said that it is the
business and duty of the State to wind up, on the
principles of strict equality, and irrespective of even the
tender considerations for all personal interests, all affairs
both of the Church in Ireland and of the claims of other
religious bodies about to be considered in Ireland, and,
having done that, to apply the residue to those purposes
which shall be found to be most for the interests of the
people of Ireland—not to the endowment of any church,
not to the support of any clergy, not to the teaching, in a
divided country, of any religious community." To the
second question, " What is to be done with the churches
themselves, the church buildings?" Mr. Gladstone
said : " My opinion is that we should do wisely, in the
application of our abstract principles, to have a due regard
to existing circumstances, and not merely to the logical
faculty, but to the feelings of mankind. These churches
in Ireland, viewed in the abstract, are national property,
but, viewed in the concrete, they are buildings which.
have been solemnly set apart for the worship of
Almighty God, in the form and according to the laws of
a particular religious communion ; and in my opinion it
would be the reverse of wisdom to attempt to remove the
control of those churches from the religious bodyfor whose
use they were built. The same thing applies in the main to
the parsonages and the immediate appendages of these
parsonages. The third question is `What distinction is to be
drawn between the public and private gifts and the
ancient and modern endowments?" Mr. Gladstone said that
it appeared to him and to his party that private endowments
ought to be considered as gifts, not to the State, but to the
particular religious persuasion for whose purposes they had
been given. The fourth question, " What is to be the limit
or organisation for the Protestant Church in Ireland and
what its relation to the Church in Ennd ?" Mr. !alad-
stone thought was a rather stiff one. Whatever religious
order or organisation they, in the conscious use of
their own private rights, think fit to establish, we ought
to recognise their equality with us as citizens, and to
extend to them the common protection of the law. In
answer to the fifth question, " What is to be the status
intermediate,
while the clergy and their government in the
while existing life interests are still extant?" Mr.
Gladstone said that the
status of the clergy
would continue the same as it is now, until the time
when it shall be altered." In concluding this speech,
Mr. Gladstone said : " Our ambition, gentlemen—the
ambition of my noble friend, of myself—is to be your
organs for that work (of doing justice to Ireland). For
that purpose my friend Mr. Grenfell has sacrificed
one of the most tranquil seats that the House of
Commons could have found for him. For that purpose
I have deliberately refused a seat, sheltered and
easy of access, in the representative chamber of this
country'at this great crisis of our affairs. Had I been
a year aeo a member for seine place with 500 voters, per-
haps I should have done wisely to continue there. But
destiny, or Providence, had not so willed it, and, as repre-
sentative of the great community of South Lancashire,
which in so many respects has been for England the
standard-bearer in the path of progress, I felt, having
here ardent and zealous friends ready to fight the
battle to the last with a masculine determination, that
for me to turn my back upon you and upon them would
he nothing less than treachery and baseness. And from
your judgment, from your free intelligence, I ask a verdict
upon this question, engaged as we are—my friend, with
whom I am identified, and I—in a cause in which it would
be noble even to fail. But every indication that reaches
us from every point of the compass conveys tc• tai cheering
anIIMICO OA WC .111 SlVitiod t 4 111e0Ced."J