At Crediton on Tuesday, Sir William Harcourt attacked the Liberal
Unionists again. He affects to despise them, but if he really despised them he would not have Liberal Unionists quite so much on the brain. No one despises the spectre who haunts him, and Sir William Harcourt is clearly haunted by Liberal Unionism, and cannot threw off the oppression, vehemently as he endeavours to do so. When he had vented his spleen on the Liberal Unionists, he returned to the Irish
Question, and pronounced once more the mystic and un- meaning formula : " They were for giving the Irish the manage- ment of their own affairs, while yet maintaining intact the authority of the Imperial Parliament." Yes ; but when you give a man power to do as he pleases while " maintaining intact" the authority of the law over him, what you want to know is exactly where the law will interfere to prevent his doing what it does not please the law that he should do ; and nothing will persuade Mr. Gladstone to let us know where that interference will begin. On Free Education Sir William Harcourt had nothing to say, except that if the taxpayers are to pay more, the people ought to have more control. Why does not Sir William Harcourt keep to "the taxpayers," instead of changing " the taxpayers " into " the people " P If the tax- payers are to pay more, the taxpayers ought to have more control, and they will wield that control through the State, which is the authorised agent of the taxpayers, not through the locality, which is nothing of the kind.
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