Denton and Haughton Examiner, etc. — 1890-03-29 (Denton, Greater Manchester, England)

CURRENT POLITICS. Mr. Gladstone was entertained at dinner at the National Liberal Club in London, On March 24, by the Liberal members for the Metropolitan consti. tuencea. Ile said if the House of Lords was bent upon suicide, it could not have taken a shorter way to the attaiumeut of that end than the course it lately pursued. All legislation would be impeded until the Irish Question was out of the way. The remainder of the right hon. gentleman's speech was devoted to the Report of the Parnell Commission, and the action of the House of Commons thereupon, which he do• flounced in strong terms. The right hon. gentleman said the Commission was composed of judges against whom he heel nothing to say but this the Commission had one fatal blot, it was Composed of members having no difference of opinion on political matters. The tribunal was so constituted that the judge and jury were one and the name person, and this in the face of the necessity found by Pmliament some 100 years ago of limiting the jurisdiction of the judges in cases of libel ; but Parliament had now given to the judges a power which an unreformed l'arliament had deprived them of. In the House of Commons Lord Randolph Churchill said that Mr. Parnell had been found innocent, and had been fined £40,000 for proving his innocence, and this allegation had not been contradicted. The Commission was appointed to find facts, and not to give colour to the enormous crimes which, in respect of the forged letters, had been committed against Mr. Parnell, and the Commission dismissed this part of the case in a few linesand ins few commonplace wordajust as though one said, " This is a fine day." He did not blame the Commission, because they were not appointed to pronounce sentence. Whilst the judges were precluded from considering certain moral questions, the majority of the House of Commons had no such excuse, and they adopted a crippled and oneaided judgment. The House of Commons went out of its way to confirm the report of the Commissioners, and made an innovation. He (Mr. Gladstone) was not an innovator. He never wished to innovate except to improve, but the present Parliament innovated in order to carry out its OIV/1 detestable wishes. For this last proceeding in Parliament there was no precedent. The Government had invented a new-fangled policy, which was vindictive, if not abominable, and under colour of a judicial proceeding they had introduced their own political passions for the purpose of crushing political opponents. The vote of censure which had been passed upon Irish members had been passed upon the Irish nation. The Irish members were the representatives of the Irish people. The charge against them was that they had connived at the excesses of their countrymen, and this charge being allowed against them, the arrow passed through their bodies to the Irish nation. The Irish nation felt this to be a wrong. Referring to Mr. Devitt's article in the oak C'evtury, the right hon. gentleman said he could not go the whole length with the writer, but he reed extracts in respect of which he went all f ours, especially those parts alleging that large numbers of the population were starving through the action of the landlords—mostly absentees. Since the days of Peel the law had undergone a revolution, but the country was still vexed with imposts and grievances. Mr. Chamberlain was present on the evening of March 21 at a Liberal Unionist soihje in Birmingham, and made a brief speech, contrasting the condition of Egypt now with what it was before Eng. land and Creme, as the mandatories of Europe, in. teetered to restore order in that country. Having seen what was the result of the English occupation of Egypt, he thought it would be unworthy of this nation if we did not fully carry out the duty which had been cast upon us. During his recent visit to Egypt he found finances restored, he found an equilibrinin between revenue and expenditure; he found a deficit turned into a surplus, which was being used for the reduction of taxation, for the promotion of public works, and for national education. This surplus, which was already a large one, might have been much larger but for the action of the French, who had refused their consent to the conversion of the debt. Courts of justice had been established throughout the country, and although he did not say they were perfect, at all events, in theory, they had a complete code of equal justice, and he believed that corruption, at any rate, had almost entirely become extinct. Taxation had been diminished, and many other reforms instituted with the most beneficial results. It would, said Mr. Chamberlain in conclusion, be unworthy of this great nation if we did not rise to the full height of our duty and complete our work before we left he country. We had no right to abandon a duty which had been cast upon us, and a work which already showed no much promise for the advantage of the people with whose destinies we had become involved.