The Chancellor of the Exchequer made a brilliant speech at
Hull on Tuesday. He pointed out that, taking the more recent by-elections, the last nine, from that at Birmingham up to that at Brighton, 32,000 odd Unionist votes had been polled, against 27,500 Gladstonian votes,—nay, more, that as compared with 1886, the Unionist vote had risen from 29,700 to 32,000, or by 2,300 ; while the Gladstonian vote had only risen from 26,100 to 27,500, or only by 1,400. This, he said, did not seem to‘ him discouraging. His antagonists in the Press have remarked on this that he ought not to have begun with Birmingham, but to have gone back to the first of the by-elections. But that is only saying that the Gladstonians do not like to leave out of account the running they made before the present Government had shown how successfully they could govern Ireland,—in other words, that they do not like to judge of the future by the last year, which really shows how the Government are slowly gaining the confidence of the country, but insist on reckoning up the results of previous years, when the Government had hardly shaken off the odium of passing a Crimes Act which has proved so mild and yet so efficacious.
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