Lord Randolph Churchill on Friday week delivered a series of
speeches, in one of which he attacked Mr. Gladstone fiercely for sanctioning obstruction,—" You have for the first time in the history of England a Parliament which directly represents the whole masses of the people—a Parliament to which the whole masses of the people of the United Kingdom have anxiously and longingly looked to satisfy the wants and the interests of the age. And you have a great democratic leader—a man who has been more trusted by the people than any man in modern history—you have him setting himself to work to smash and to destroy the only instrument by which democracy can possibly achieve the duties which have been by the wisdom of the present generation and of former generations devolved upon it." The only remedy was to "sit tight,"—that is, to display as much tenacity and perseverance as the Opposition ; but he, at the same time,believed that the Government could, if they pleased, at once terminate the resistance to their Crimes Bill. He thought they ought to do it, and not in any way to modify that Bill, for if a Government asked for extraordinary powers, but accepted less than those powers, it at once destroyed the confidence of the country either in its judgment or its nerve.
Previous page
