Mr. Goschen also made a great speech on Wednesday to
his constituents in the Prince's Hall, Piccadilly. He stated that though he had, as a Liberal Unionist, joined Lord Salis- bury's Government, he had been obliged, in every Cabinet to which he had previously belonged, to sacrifice his own personal views at least as much to those of his colleagues as he had been obliged to do in the present Cabinet. Replying to Mr. Bryce's sneer that Mr. Balfour's administration of Ireland had been the best-advertised thing outside Barnum's show, he asked, who had advertised Mr. Balfour ? Surely it was the Irish papers which had attacked him so furiously, and had so compelled the Unionist papers to speak out in his defence,— and he remarked that the epithet " beggarly " which Mr. Bryce had applied to the legislative achievements of the Government was certainly a remarkable one, seeing that it covered a measure for the conversion of 500 millions of National Debt, great Local Government measures for England, London, and Scotland, and a Scotch Universities measure,—to which we may add the measure for the reconstruction of the Navy, to which Mr. Goschen is not reported to have referred. He gave also a very temperate and interesting review of the dispute with Portugal, quoting Major Serpa Pinto's own words to prove that his was not principally a scientific expedition, but one intended to secure "the submission to the Crown of Portugal" of a large territory to which Portugal had no claim.
Previous page
