The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1905-12-16
The Political Dscontent Now Almost IS Great
as That Caused by the American
Colonies in 1775.
The Education Ac. Which is Designed to
Force the Anglican Church Upon
the People Unpopular.

1t is not often that the retirement of
a British Premier from office, when he
is still in the prime of manhood, can be
regarded as his last appearance of any
Importance in public life, says Robert
Ellis Thompson in the New York Free
mans Journal. But when Mr.. Ar
thur Balfour yields up the insignia of
high Office this week to the King, Eng
land may be said to be taking her leave
of this half-Scotchman, Cecil, for
all time. Even if his party should re-
turn to power before this generation
shall have passed away, it will not do
so under his leadership. The Tories, as
well as the country, are weary of his
subtilities, his antiquities, his evasions
and his pose He has aided in splitting
his party into two antagonistic halves,
without the honor of standing by either
of them. He has worn out the great
majority which was given him during
the Boer war, in measures of inutility
and folly, and he steps down from the
seat of power as one who had the
grandest opportunity Of his time, and
threw it away through his incapacity
and his faulty.
In 1900 it really seemed as if the Lib
erals were to be wiped out by the war;
mad constituencies. All their subser-
viency to the Chamberlain policy in
South Africa could not save them from
the most sweeping defeat they have un-
dergone since the reform bill of 1892
England put herself and her destinies
into the hands of the Tories, as into
the hands of the lords and squires at
the restoration of 1861 Dissenters de-
serted their Liberal leaders even more
than they had deserted Mr.. Gladstone
on the Home Rule issue. If ever a man
came into control of parliamentary
majority with the right to feel that he
stood for the Whole country and all
its classes, it was Mr.. Balfour, through
the result of elections which meant war
to the end on the South African re-
publics. Every other consideration was
left out Of sight for the time, as it was
in ITS, when the Liberals were de-
feated. almost as generally because the
British public meant the suppression
at any cost of the uprising in America.
Mr.. Balfour saw nothing in that huge
vote but the return of England to Tory
principles, and he used his majority to
force upon the English people measures
as offensive as possible to myriads of
the voters who had given him their
support Toryism means that every
facility shall be given to the clergy of
the Established Church to bring up the
rising generation, whether Anglican or
dissenter, in the creed of the Church of
England. Mr.. Balfour,. education act
was measure for stamping out dis
sent by getting hold of the children,
and putting the Church Of England
back in the place it held before the
troubles Of 1641-1661. Public moneys
were handed over to the clergy of that
church for the conduct of schools, in
which the children of dissenters are
taught that their fathers and mothers
are living in sinful state of schism,
and that the preachers they hear on
Sundays are sinful interlopers into a
work which belongs by divine right
to the Anglican clergy. The Bishops of
that church embraced the opportunity
to secure an advantage for their COM
munion out of the judgment of
1900, and Mr.. Balfour yielded to them
at the cost of alternating the whole of
that dissenting vote, which had left
the Liberals in 1885, or during the war.
Toryism also identifies itself with the
interests of the trade in beer and gin,
The philanthropic part of the British
people have been agitating for thirty
years past for restrictions on the grant
ing of licenses, and the reduction of
the places in which intoxicants are
sold. OF this class also many had been
carried off their feet by the British
war excitement, and helped to swell
the Tory majority in the House. They
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