Yesterday week Mr. Chamberlain addressed the Con- servative members of
the Midland Union under Lord Windsor's presidency at the Westminster Palace Hotel, after his lordship had remarked that the indications of want of cohesion in the party had at least given their opponents many moments of hysterical joy. Mr. Chamberlain held, as Mr. Balfour also holds, that the great victory of last year was more certainly due to hearty dislike of the log-rolling Government of their predecessors than to their own merits. He reminded his audience how " Scripture had been ran- sacked " by the Gladstonians in order to find terms strong enough to decry the Liberal Unionists for opposing Irish Home-rule; yet now, in the discussions on the Education Bill, a considerable number of those opponents had acknowledged frankly that they knew the Home-rule policy to be dangerous to the country, that they had deserted their co-religionists in Ireland with " bleeding hearts," and that they did so because they expected in return for that act of self-sacrifice to obtain the support of the Irish Nationalists for the attack on the Church of England, whereas no sooner was a. de- nominationalist Education Bill proposed than the Irish Nationalists found themselves compelled to support the de- nominationalist policy. Passing to the Education Bill, Mr. Chamberlain declared that the only part of the policy of the Bill to which the Government are pledged, is that which will save the voluntary schools from extinction, and he then fore- shadowed with tolerable distinctness the determination which was announced on Monday by Mr. Balfour to throw over- board the Bill against which such a multitude of obstructive amendments had been launched night after night during the last week, and to confine the efforts of the Government to saving the voluntary schools by an adequate grant-in-aid.
Previous page
