Mr. John Burns opened his campaign in Battersea on Wednesday
night with a remarkable speech, the sincerity and eloquence of which cannot be denied even by those who differ most acutely from his views on many of the burning eniestions of the day. He spoke with just pride of the significance of his inclusion in the Cabinet, a promotion which had made him "the standard-bearer of the rude mechanicals," and had elicited congratulations from all classes and conditions. As to his policy, he declared that he would do his best to relieve municipal enterprise from the conscious bias that had operated against it so long, while in regard to the question of the unemployed, "by helping the poor they must be careful that they did not endow poverty." His idea was "fewer workhouses and more homes ; smaller charities and larger wages ; more pleasure and less drink ; smaller cities and larger villages"; and he hoped to bring to the discharge of his duties "some knowledge born of kinship with the poor." The land question could only be solved by promoting "another invasion of Britain by Britons." His references to Chinese labour and capitalists were overfierce, and we regret to note that he committed himself, in an answer to a question, to what prac- tically amounts to the policy of restricting output. But with all deductions, the speech went far to justify the general approval with which Mr. Burns's appointment has been received. Nothing could have been better than his description of the alternatives with which he was confronted by the offer of office. "He had to choose whether, for the next ten years, he would indulge, perhaps in the futility of faction, perhaps in the irapOtainty of Intrigue, or accept an office which in their day andgeneration he could make fruitful of good worls."
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