The Portland daily press., 1872-02-08
THE PRESS.
THURSDAY MORNING, FEB. 8, 1879.
Mr.. Gladstone,s Warlike Speech.


The speech of Mr.. Gladstone, the BRUSH
Premier, ON the first day of the present ses-
sion of Parliament, was as warnke declara-
ton as he could well frame. The utterances
of Prime Ministers are not to be estimated
like those of unofficial persons, who speak
without responsibility. Every word is duly
weighed before it is uttered by men who
speak for empires, and whose opinions affect
the interests and perhaps the destinies OF ma
tons. When, therefore, a man so cold, so
reserved and so automatically cautious as
Gladstone, talks in so impassioned manner
of the impossbility of submitting to the
American claim for indirect damages, most
serious impression of Engand's feeling on the
subject is conveyed to the world. The unof-
fetal utterances of the English press were not
calculated to create alarm, the Queens
speech was as ingeniously non-committal as
ever, but the speech of Gladstone, when strmg
to the quick by the sneers of his old antago-
mist, Disraeli, rings across the ocean like
war-cry.
1t is too bad that the aristocracy OF England
should still have it in their power to disturb
the relations between the people of the Unit
ed States and those of Great Britain. The
English people did us no harm during the
war-owed us no ill-will. The noble work.
ing-people of the manufacturing towns, even
in the hight of their distress at the scarcity of
cotton arising from our war, gave no counte-
nance to the ignoble lords who sought to OBJ
tain cotton by opening the ports of an indie
pendent Southern Confederacy. The great
body of the English workmen were true to us,
even when fidelity meant to them starvation.
But of course the governing classes took no
note of proletarian sentiment" and inflicted
on this country the tremendous losses for
which it now seeks PREPARATION. And now a
second time we are made to feel the deadly
influence of aristocratic hostility. A nomi-
nally "LiberaP' English government, more
nearly representing the people of that country
than perhaps any other that ever
existed, though it is as far from
radical as can be imagined, made treaty
with us in which we so far waived our just
demands for full and immediate indemnity as
to submit the whole matter to arbitration.
But upon its being discovered that in this
way the United States stand good chance of
really obtaining reparation, the Tory aristoc-
raey proceed to make political capitaT' by
raising howl of depreciation. Now the Glad
stone government is very much like other
governments; it wants, first of all, to contin-
ue in Office. 1t therefore out-rants Disraeli
and his Tory associates in denouncing the
American claims. So the rivalry of these
two wings of the English aristocracy seems
likely to excite second time the animosity
and perhaps disturb the peace of two great
nations whose people feel for each other moth
ing but the strongest sympathy and friend
ship. What happy thing for the millions
who must suffer from the competition of
Gladstone and Disraeli and their parties, if
they could be placed in the front ranks of the
contending forces which their folly is calcula-
ted to set in motion! Even war might be a
cheap price to pay for the humiliation OF the
British aristocracy.