Mr. Goschen made a great speech on Tuesday night in
Hen- gler's Circus, Liverpool, as candidate for the Exchange Division of that great constituency. The chair was taken by Mr. For- wood, M.P., and Mr. Goschen received a very imposing recep- tion. He declared that he had come there to win a seat for the Union, and twitted the Gladstonians with having hoisted the white-flag and asked for a parley just on the eve of the joining of the battle,—not quite justly, we think, for was it not Mr. Chamberlain who asked for the parley in his speech at Birmingham, and was not the Conference a reply to that speech P He then remarked that when the Irish people were showing signs of returning to the counsels of soberness, the National League determined to stir them up by propounding the "Plan of Campaign," and from that time, of course, the diffi- culty of governing Ireland had rapidly increased. The "Plan of Campaign" was so immoral in itself that it had not been accepted by Mr. Parnell, though it had been passed over in silence by English politicians who ought to have protested against it It was the wish of the Government to maintain the law in Ireland, not because it would gratify "the truculence of a governing race," but because they believed that Ireland could never be prosperous till the law was reverenced and obeyed. If the Goverment were allowed to go forward in a wise legisla- tion for Ireland, they would attempt to deal with the causes of the gigantic failure of the Land Act of 1881, and to stimulate all promising industries in that country. Without the supremacy of law, Ireland could never be happy. A despotic and spas- modic sentimentalism would not benefit her, even if the anarchic doctrine which underlay it were administered in the honey of "sentimental gush." Doctors now are accustomed to try the temperature of their patients by putting a little ther- mometer under their tongues; but Mr. Goschen did not think that that practice could measure the true warmth of political sentiment. It was not by the temperature of the political tongue that you could measure the warmth of the political heart.
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