The Northern Guardian. — 1892-08-11 (Hartlepool, Cleveland, England)

ECHOES OFTRE DAY.  Another speech, specially constructed to insult working men, was deliverd by Mr T. P. O'Connor in the House of Commons. He practically declared that wherever a Unionist or Conservative candidate had been successful, success was due to bribing working men with beer. We understand that the Gladstonian managers are making strenuous eftbrts to prevent a repetition of these stupid charges, as working men in various parts of the country are bitterly resenting the insult. We can well understand it. A more monstrous accusation we have never heard. It simply means, as England returned a large majority of Unionists, that, in the opinion of Mr Gladstone's followers, fully one-half of our English working men can he got to vote any way for a glass of beer. If that is the ordinary Gladstonian idea of the labouring classes, we are not surprised that they have to look to Ireland for their majority.  -000 Mr Furness, M.P., is just now working this seam. We are sorry to see it, for several reasons. In the first place, it is a bogus agitation, based on more falsehood than truth. There is drinking at elections, certainly ; but people in these parts smile when Gladstonians claim to be freer of the taint than Unionists. In the second place, we regret to see the Member for the Hartlepools entering into another crusade which will only land him into difficulties. Mr Furness is unfortunate in the matters which he tackles in the public service, and the re:oon of this is that our Member is always a little premature. Someone initiates a movement. Mr Furness does not stay to consider whether there is anything in it worth stirring about. We suppose his self-communings are something to this effect :—" Hallo ! here's So-and-So going for the brewers. Capital idea ! Why shouldn't I have a cut in, too, and get quoted in the papers ?" &c., &c. And he cuts in, and afterwards, when the thing explodes and the public find that it was just a popularity-hunting expedient, he cuts rather a sorry figure.  It is not many months since Mr Furness was working an exactly similar line of advertising. Two poachers were condemned to death for the murder of two gamekeepers. A few sentimental letters appeared in London papers about the shamefulness of hanging the poachers and leaving their poor wives and families unprotected. We suppose Mr Furness thought there was going to be a great sympathetic rising throughout the whole country, and that he might as well be the her. of it, for he at once asked a question in the House of Commons as to the poor poachers. But he was mistaken. The sentimentalists had their day, and then the sound sense of the English ' people as.serted itself, and the public began to ask : "What about the poor wives and families of the gamekeepers, who were foully murdered just for doing their duty Are they to have no sympathy? Are we to encourage crime by making pets of murderers while the families of those who have been basely done to death never receive a thought?" Mr Furness had moved too soon. He thought the public were going to make martyrs of the poachers, and so dropped a modest tear himself in advance. But they did not ; they reserved their sympathy for those who justly deserved it, and he was glad to drop "the poor poachers" and say nothing more about them.  —eoo- He is making exactly the same mistake in this brewers' affair. At the close of the General Election there was some talk—mostly by candidates who wanted an excuse for being beaten— about beer being given away by the Conservatives. Annoyed at the utter rout of their candidates in England, it was taken up savagely by Gladstonian papers; and then comes Mr Furness's inevitable question. He initiated nothing himself, of course. He just followed his usual custom of trying to make personal capital out of an agitation which others had sot going.