Democratic Sentinel, Volume 10, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 June 1886 — THE PREMIER’S APPEAL [ARTICLE]

THE PREMIER’S APPEAL

Gladstone Issues a Manifesto to the Electors of England and Scotland. The Issue Plainly Stated, Which Must Be Met in a Manly Way. Mr. Gladstone has issued the following manifesto to the electors of Midlothian: Gentlemen —ln consequence of the defeat of the bill for the better government of Ireland the Ministry advised, and her Majesty was pleased to sanction, the dissolution of Parliament for a decision by the nation of the gravest and likewise the simplest issue that has been submitted to it for half a century, It is only a sense of the gravity of this i ssue which induces me, at a period of life when Nature cries aloud for repose, to seek, after sitting in thirteen Parliaments, a seat in the fourteenth, and with this view to solicit, for the fifth time, the honor of your confidence. At the last election I endeavored in my addresses and speeches to impress upon you the fact that a great crisis had arrived in the affairs of Ireland. Weak as the late Government was for ordinary purposes, it had great advantages for dealing with that crisis. A comprehensive measure proceeding from that Government would have received warm and extensive support from within the Liberal party, and would probably have closed the Irish controversy within the present session and have lelt the Parliament of 1885 free to prosecute the now stagnant work of ordinary legislation, with the multitude of questions it includes. My earnest hope was to support the late Cabinet in such a course of policy. On the 26th of last January the opposite policy of coercion was declared to have been the choice of the Government, the Earl of Carnarvon alone refusing. to share in it. The Irish question was thus placed in the foreground, to the exclusion of every other. The hour, as all felt, was come. The only point remaining to determine was the manner in which it was to be dealt with. In my judgment, the proposal of coercion was not justified by the facts, and was doomed to certain and disgraceful failure. Some method of governing Ireland other than coercion ought, as I thought, to be sought for and to be found. Therefore I viewed without regret the fall of the late Cabinet, and. when summoned by her Majesty to form a new one, I undertook it on the basis of an anti-coercion policy, with the fullest explanation to those whose aid I sought as colleagues when I proposed to examine whether it might not be possible to grant Ireland a domestic legislature and maintain the honor and consolidate the unity of the empire. A government was formed, and the'work was at once put in hand You will not, gentlemen, fail to understand how and why it is that the affairs of Ireland, and not for the first time, have thrust aside every other subject, and adjourned our hopes of useful and progressive legislation. As a question -of the first necessities of social order it forces itself into the van. The late Cabinet, though right in giving it that place, were, as we thought, wrong in their manner of treating it. It was ■our absolute duty on taking the Government, if we did not adopt their method, to propose another. Thus, gentlemen, it is that this great .and simple issue has come upon you and demands your decision. Will you govern Ireland by coercion or will you let Ireland manage her own affairs? To debate in this address this and that detail of the lately defeated bill would only be to disguise this issue, and would be as futile as to discuss the halting, .stumbling, ever-shifting, and ever-advancing projects of an intermediate class which have proceeded from the seceding Liberals. There are two clear, positive, and intelligible plans before the world: There is the plan of the Government and there is the plan of Lord Salisbury. Our plan is that Ireland should, under well-considered conditions, transact her own affairs. His plan is to ask Parliament to renew repressive laws and enforce them resolutely for twenty years, by the end of which time he assures us Ireland will be fit to accept any government in the way of local government, on the repeal of the coercion laws, you may wish to give her. True union is to be tested by the sentiments of ■the human beings united. Tried by this criterion we have less union between Great Britain and Ireland now than we had under the settlement of 1782. Enfranchised Ireland, gentlemen, asks through her lawful representatives for the revival of her domestic legislature—not, on the face of it, an innovating, but a restorative proposal. She urges with truth that the centralization of parliaments has been the division of the peoples, but she recognized the fact that the union, lawlessly as it was obtained, cannot and ought not to be repealed. She is content to receive her legislature in a form divested of prerogatives which might have impaired her imperial interests and bettor adapted than the settlement of 1782 to secure to her regular control of her own affairs. She has not repelled but has welcomed the stipulations for the protection of the minority. To such provisions we have given and shall give careful heed, but I trust Scotland will condemn the attempts so singularly made to import into the controversy a venomous element of religious bigotry. Let her take warning by the deplorable riots in Belfast and other places in the north. Among the benefits, gentlemen, I anticipate from your acceptance of our policy are these : The consolidation of the united empire and great addition to its strength; the stoppage of the heavy, constant, and demoralizing waste of the public treasure ; the abatement and gradual extinction of ignoble feuds in Ireland and that development of her resources which experience shows to be a natural consequence of free and orderly government; the redemption of the honor of Great Britain from the stigma fastened upon her almost from time immemorial in respect to Ireland by the judgment of the whole civilized world ; and, lastly, the restoration of Parliament to its dignity and efficiency and the regular progress of the business of the country. Well, gentlemen, the first question I now put to you is, How shall Ireland be governed 1 There is another question behind it and involved in it. How are England and Scotland to be governed? You know how, for the last six years especially, the affairs of England and Scotland have been impeded qhd your imperial Parliament discredited and disabled. All this hua>pened while the Nationalists'were but a small minority of the Irish members without support from so much as. a- handful of members not Irish. Now they approach ninety, and are eintitled to say: “ Wis are speaking the views of the Irish nation.” It is impossible to deal with this subject by half measures. They are strong in their humbers, strong in British support, which brought 313 members to vote for their country; strongest of all in the sense of being right. But, gentlemen, we have done our part; the rest remains for you. Electors of the country, may you be enabled to see through and cast away all delusions, refuse evil, and choose good. I have the honor >to be, gentlemen, your faithful and grateful servant, William 'E. Gladstone.