At a dinner given on Tuesday by the East Worcestershire
Liberal Unionists to Mr. Austen Chamberlain, at the Grand Hotel, Birmingham, Mr. Chamberlain made one of his singularly telling speeches. He observed upon the eagerness, not to say impatience, with which the new Government are " stuffing the provincial benches of our country boroughs, and crowding the local Boards in Ireland over which they have control with their own partisan nominees," and remarked that it did not look very much as if they expected to stay where they are. No one has been consulted about the Home-rule Bill except the Anti-Parnellites. The-motto of this Government appears to be, " Only Irish need apply." It was almost pathetic to see a Government which came into office with promises of an all-round revolution, priding itself,!after a six months' un- criticised tenure, on having; allowed meetings in Trafalgar Square, and appointed a few women to inspect women's workshops. In Egypt it had changed,—very wisely changed, —the policy which Mr. Morley and Mr. Gladstone had led Europe to expect, and in Uganda it appeared to be willing to pursue once more the fatal policy of drifting. Mr. Chamberlain had been told, he said, that,,because he was willing in 1886 and 1887 to devise if he could a mane vivendi with the Gladetonians, and had gone perhaps beyond the verge of what was safe in attempting a reconciliation, he is now, six or seven years later, debarred from the right of condemning in principle the Irish proposals of Mr. Gladstone, simply on the ground that Mr. Gladstone has agreed to retain' the Irish representatives in the Supreme Parliament as Mr. Chamberlain then required of him. But besides the fact that things have moved on since 3886 and 1887, and that compromises which seemed feasible then would be sheer madness now, there is no sign at all that the supremacy of the Parliament at Westminster is to be seriously and prac- tically maintained. Neither'section of the Irish Home-rulers will hear of it, and without the' Irish Home-rulers Mr. Glad- stone has no majority. The _Unionists meet Parliament, eon- eluded Mr. Chamberlain, determined to resist to the last the policy which begins by betraying the interests of the Irish loyalists, and will end by betraying the interests of Great Britain.
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