Mr. J. G. Blaine, the unscrupulous politician who contested the
Presidency in 1884 with Mr. Cleveland, intends to offer himself again in 1888, and has already begun making speeches, and, with a view to the Irish vote, has pronounced- strongly in favour of sHome-role. In a speeoh delivered at Portland, Maine, on Jane-1st, he recommends the United Kingdom to adopt the Federal system, declares that Maine would not bear • to be governed by New York, and denounces Lord Salisbury for advising the Irish to leave their country. The Irish, he •says, with a flue knowledge of history, were in Ireland hundreds of years before Lord Salisbury's ancestor, probably a Danish pirate or a Norman peasant, came over with William the Conqueror! Ireland will win Home-rule through "the presanre of the public opinion of the world," and Mr. Glad- stone will allow the Irish peasant, who is starving in the richest of countries for want of food, to purchase the soil he tills. It is not a pleasing reflection that in a day of wide suffrages 'Mr. Blaine is a formidable candidate for the, headship of a great nation, and that ignorant nonsense of that kind may procure him scores of thousands of votes. Fortunately, Americans have learned to .discount speeches made for elec- tioneering purposes, and- entertain a special distrust of the "brilliant" Mr. J. G. Blaine.
Previous page
