The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle. — 1888-01-21 (Stourbridge, West Midlands, England)

BEACIT ON IRELAND.  Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, speaking at Clifton on Tuesday night, said that if Home Rule were granted to Ireland the only change at Westminster would be that instead of time being wasted over trivial Irish discussions such questions as the commercial and financial relations between the two kingdoms would be discussed. At present it seemed to him that the idea of Home Rule was enveloped in a kind of benevolent flummery. Among the gravest symptoms of the Irish difficulty he classed the facts that the men sent to prison for breaking the law were treated almost as heroes by the populace, and that sixty-five of the Home Rule members were returned unopposed because of the anti-English sentiment in the minds of the Irish electors. There was need for bold and sympathetic statesmanship, and, though a separate Parliament and Executive F hould be withheld, the Irish members should be granted as great a voice as the Scotch in the management of their own national affairs. He would submit two considerations to those who were inclined to sympathise with the attacks made on the Government. If Mr. Matthews and Mr. ilfour—(cheers)—had really deprived Irishmen of free speech, and were using the Crimes Act to torture and murder their political adversaries, it would not require the personal abuse and scurrilous language levelled at them to rouse the English people against them. (Cries of "No.") Then, it was not wise to believe implicitly everything we read in the English newspapers, and that caution was specially requisite in regard to Irish affairs. Our language did not mean the same thing in the mouth of a fervid and imaginative Irishnlan, and in the mouth of a cold and cautious Englishman. If we heard that an Englishman was killed we immediately lamented his death, but if an Irishman told us he was killed we knew he was only seriously bruised. (Loud laughter.) We ought to apply that rule to all the fervid rhetoric, all the sensational crimes, all the accounts of police outrages which from one side or the other we saw culled from every part of Ireland as the staple of the Irish news in our London daily journals. (Hear, hear.) He believed the Government had only acted strictly within the limits of their constitutional duty, and that they had deserved the thanks of the nation by making real progress in the establishment throughout Ireland of the supremacy of the law. (Cheers.) An English Local Government Bill was to be the next important business of the session, regarding which he would only remark that he hoped the Government would be wise enough not to attempt to ride rough shod over local associations in order to secure a kind of ideal, and that too much ought not to be expected from it. Another great subject which must occupy the time of Parliament was finance. He trusted the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with his acknowledged financial genius, would be able to make a great saving to the nation by reducing the interest on the National Debt. (Cheers.) A resolution congratulating him on his return to health, and hoping he would speedily resume his place as a Minister of the Crown having been passed, Sir Michael Hicks-Beach said he had lost his health in the service of the country, and if the country required his services again he would give them as long as his health permitted him to do so, but he was not impatient to be in office.