Mr. Goschen made a lively speech in the Pablic Hall
at Devonport on Wednesday evening. He congratulated the country on the virtually total disappearance of the " Little England" patty, and on the adhesion of the Government to the policy of keeping up a great Navy. He pointed out how- Mr. Gladstone's precedent for Home-rule in the relations of Norway to Sweden had collapsed under the difficulties which have recently developed themselves in the history of Norwegian Home-rule, and he urged the necessity for a Unionists to s'and well together and allow no relaxation in the alliance between the Conservatives and Liberal Unionists. In relation to the windbag about Unionist differences, Mr. Goschen said that the heads of the two allied parties had laughed in their friendly conferences at the mare's-nest that had been discovered as to some coldness between the Liberal Unionist and the Conservative leaders. On the other hand, the alliance between the Irish party and the Gladstoniana had always been an alliance cemented on log-rolling principles. As Mr. Healy had recently avowed openly in the House of Commons, "I know no occasion on which the Irish ever gave their votes unless they got something for them." Again, said Mr. Goschen, "The Welsh drovers drove the Government very hard, and the Irish whippers-in hunted their pack very hard," but the English Gladstonians sat silent and sad, and knew that English legislation was being starved in order to increase the pressure for conceding Irish Home-rule. The speech ended in a very eloquent appeal to the South of England, which had formerly done so much to increase the Colonial Empire and gain the Indian Empire of Great Britain, to save us from that threatened disintegration of the Empire with which the Irish party propose to crown their endeavours for the glory of Ireland.
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