The Attorney-General, Sir Henry James, made a good speech at
Burton on Saturday, in which he twitted the Conservatives with the excessive personality of their harangues. They resem- bled, he said, rough cricketers who lose their temper, and bowl at the legs or any part of the person of the batsman who is in. He contrasted the Times' trade report at the conclusion of 1879, on the condition of things at the opening of that year, with its similar review at the close of last year,—" There were distrust and uneasiness everywhere ; a deep, almost impenetrable gloom sank down on almost every industry." But at the end of 1881, it said,—" The year which is now closing has been marked by a steady and great improvement in trade." Sir Henry contrasted very finely the patriotism of Grattan, who, while he denounced our policy in Ireland, was always loyal to his Sovereign and ardently desirous for the welfare of England, with the avowed hostility of the new class of Home-rulers to both England and the English people, and this in spite of the far larger spirit of sympathy now exhibited towards Ireland. He remarked on the oddity of the supposition that Lord Grey was now deserting the Liberals for the first time ; whereas he had never supported them since he, now very many years ago, took his seat "on the cross,—the very cross,—benches ;" and Sir Henry remarked with scorn on the dialect in which Tories appeal to agricultural constituencies, where their language seems always to assume the form of promising a five-shilling duty on foreign corn, never heard of elsewhere.
Previous page
