• On Friday, September 6th, Lord Randolph Churchill addressed a
great gathering of Conservatives held in the park of Sir Pryce Pryce-Jones at Newtown, Montgomeryshire. The first part of the speech was occupied with showing that the Welsh electors act very foolishly in supporting the. Liberals, who have done nothing for them, and with pointing out how the Unionists, though unencouraged by political aid irom the Principality, have yet bestowed upon her very considerable benefits. With this preface, the speaker pro- ceeded to defend himself from the charge of having at Walsall given utterance to Radical and Communistic sentiments. " I have always," said he, " drawn a broad distinction—a definite and clear line—between what I may call organic reform, which involves constitutional change and even revolution, and social reform." To the first he would always offer vehement opposition. Social reform, however, was the proper work of the Tory Party. Next, Lord Randolph repeated his declaration that the two great evils under which the poor now suffer are drink and the badness of their dwellings. The one he would cure by placing licensing in the hands of the people, the other by compelling the local authorities to perform duties already imposed on them by the various Acts of Parliament which enact that the Municipalities shall purchase and rebuild houses unfit for human habitation. This was not Socialism, and to prove it Lord Randolph quoted a statement made by Mr. Goschen in 1885, in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer declared that " landlords ought certainly not to receive compensation in proportion to the profit which they made by keeping their houses in a bad state, but only in proportion to the profit they might get from them if kept in a state fit for human habitation." On the whole, the speech of the champion of Tory Democracy was a very clever one, and if it were possible to believe in the speaker's intel- lectual sincerity, one of real moment.
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