Mr. Goschen delivered a powerful speech at St. James's Hall
on Thursday at the annual dinner of the United Club. He complimented the Government on having kept a certain continuity of policy in relation to Foreign and Colonial Affairs, and he laughed at Mr. Asquith for saying that on domestic policy it is the duty of the new Government to reverse the policy of their predecessors. Was there any intention, he asked, to reverse the Army policy of their predecessors, to show any sympathy, for instance, with mutiny ; or to reverse the policy of the last Government at the Treasury, or its policy at the Post Office ? Had not one of the first acts of the new Postmaster-General been:to confirm the policy of the
late Postmaster-General P This notion of reversing all their predecessors' policy was a thoroughly unpractical one. Only on one subject, indeed, had Mr. Gladstone's Government as yet attempted it. But in the Evicted Tenants' Commission they had reversed almost all the principles of their predecessors' policy. They had packed the Commission with the representa- tives of one side ; and they had allowed it to inquire, not into the justice of the case, but merely into the best mode of rein- stating the tenants. It was said that they would ask Parliament for a sum of money wherewith to restore these evicted tenants. If so, he hoped they would explain separately the particular kind of loss for which these tenants were to be compensated. Were they to be compensated for the personal injuries they had sustained in resisting the police, or for the miseries incurred as a consequence of their refusal to pay rent? Parliament would expect a particular list of the items of injury for which compensation was claimed.
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