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MR. OSBORNE MORGAN BEFORE…

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MR. OSBORNE MORGAN BEFORE HIS CONSTITUENTS. On Wednesday evening, the 18th instant, the Right Hon. George Osborne Morgan, M.P., Judge Advocate General, delivered his annual address to his constituents in the Public Hall, Wrexham, when the hall was well filled, a large number of the gentler sex being present. The chair was occupied by Mr. Edward Evans (Bronwylfa). Mr. Osborne Morgan, on rising to address the meeting, was received with loud cheers. He said that when he came down among them at the time of the rising of Parliament there were two very dark spots upon the political horizon—there was Egypt and there was Ireland. (Hear, hear.) There were a certain number of people who avowed, and probably there were still more who in their hearts believed, that so long as a war was successful it did not matter how or why it was begun. To that principle he, for one, would never subscribe. He. as they all knew, had never been a member of the Peace-at-all-price party himself, but at the same time he believed that no war could be justifiable except upon the grounds of its necessity. (Hear, hear.) He detested the Afghan war, because he believed it to be one of wanton aggression. (Hear, hear.) He deplored the war in the Transvaal, because he believed that it was a war to force on a brave and patriotic people a hated foreign yoke. (Hear, hear.) Therefore, let them not believe their opponents when they said that the Government were taking a leaf out of the Jingo policy. (Hear, hear.) The- war in Egypt was forced upon them by sheer necessity. (Cheers.) Of course, it was easy enough to say. as some of their opponents were doing, that if the Government had adopted another policy that war might have been avoided. They might be anxious to hear something about the future policy of the Government in Egypt—(hear, hear)-but he was afraid he could not gratify their wish, because in the first place he did not know— (laughter)—and if he did know he should not be at liberty to tell them. (Renewed laughter.) But he could tell them what the Government would not do. (Hear, hear.) They would not enter into any secret treaty. (Cheers.) They would not annex Egypt. (Renewed cheers.) It had been said, and truly said, that our interests in Egypt were not of a selfish kind, and, happily, for once, British interests and European interests-aye, and Egyptian interests too-were one, because it could not be for the interest of any civilised European country—and least of all for Egypt itself, that a state of things should exist under which another Arabi could be possible. (Hear, hear.) We had a special interest in Egypt. The Suez Canal was the gateway to India, and it would not quite do to part with the key. (Hear, hear.) His friend, Mr. Courtney, speaking the other night, thought the proper solution of the Egyptian question was to let the Egyptians stew in their own juice." (Laughter.) There was another culinary proverb which they ought also to remember, which said that too many cooks are apt to spoil the broth." (Laughter and cheers.) The chairman had alluded to his recent visit to Ireland, which was most interesting, though in some respects rather painful. It enabled him to do two things, namely, to test the truth of the assertions which were constantly made in the course of the debates on the Crime Prevention Bill in the House of Commons, that if the Bill were passed Irishmen would have no liberty and no justice, because their mouths would be gagged and their juries would be packed. All he had to say was that he never took up a National newspaper with- out reading the most unmeasured abuse of the British Government and the English people, and the writer, whoever he was, always concluded by saying he was sorry he could not say more, because his mouth was gagged. (Laughter.) This reminded him of an old story told at Oxford of a fox-hnnting squire, when fox-hunting squires used very different language from that used now. He was walking with his family, and he met a farmer who had com- mitted a great crime-he had shot a fox. (Laughter.) The squire turned upon the farmer, and called him every name under the sun, and uttered every oath in the English language, and used expressions which he (the speaker) would be exceedingly sorry to repeat, and concluded by saying, There now, I cannot say more before my wife and daughters." (Laughter.) It was the same in Ireland. They could not say more because their mouths were gagged. Then as to the administration of justice, he happened to be present on the bench on the occasion of the trial of the unfortunate prisoner Michael Walsh, who was now under sentence of death. He had had some experience in such cases, and he never in his experience had witnessed so fair a trial or so intelligent and, he should say, so im- partial a jury and if that jury was packed, then the more packed juries they had in England and Wales the better. (Hear, hear.) Remedial and repressive legislation for Ireland was slowly but steadily doing its work, and there were one or two figures to bear this out, which he should like to quote to them. In May, 1881, the number of agrarian outrages of all descriptions was 351. In May last, when Mr. Trevelyan went to Ireland, the number was 396. Now, let them mark how they went down from 393 in August, 1881, to 167 in August, 1882 and in September they had actually fallen from 416 in 1881 to 130 in 1882. (Cheers.) At the same time, there were other very cheering symptoms in the horizon. They all knew that the Land League Fund—not an unimportant factor in the Land League itself-had at last collapsed, and that the Land League itself had been compelled to enter upon a new phase. The Land League was nothing like such a power in Ireland as it was a year or two ago. (Cheers.) In the first place, the two agitations, the one in favour of the tenant and the other in favour of the farm labourer did not appear to fit it. (Hear, hear.) An association like the Land League required a cry, and a cry required a grievance. There was a grievance in Ireland, he fully admitted, but the cry had been heard and the grievance redressed. (Cheers.) They must have patience with a country like Ireland-a country having so many secret societies-a country haunted and tormented by a dreamy and impracticable desire for separation, which she could not, and must not get—(cheers)—a country whose soil was barely sufficient to support even her diminishing population, without any great centres like Liverpool, Manchester, and Bristol to draw away her surplus population, and with a system of land tenure which contained many of the evils, with very few of the advantages of peasant proprietorship,-in such a country improvement must be slow but this he would say, that the destinies of Ireland were never entrusted to two men more able, more courageous, more thoroughly capable of sympathising with the wrongs of Ire.and than Lord Spencer and Mr. Trevelyan. (Cheers.) He had dwelt rather long on these two questions, and he hoped they would pardon him. They would naturally like to hear something about the domestic legislation of the last session. He must admit that the last year had been a year of administrative rather than of legislative success; but it had not been such a disastrous session as some would represent. Lord Cairns' Settled Land Act, a measure which was especially interesting to him, had been passed. The Act did this—it gave to every limited owner in England virtually a power to sell his land. (Hear, hear.) He did not see how, unless they were prepared to abolish all kinds of settlement, real or personal, they could go further in the direction of what he once ventured to call the free circulation of land. (Hear, hear.) He then referred to the Married Women's Property Act, which he had the honour of piloting through the House of Commons. The real credit for the measure was not due to him nor to the Lord Chancellor, however, but to a number of high-minded women who had devoted their lives to the purpose. They had often heard of a poor man's bill this was a poor woman's measure, for it gave to every poor woman in the country the same power of control over her own property which other richer sisters had been able to acquire for the last 200 years by the aid of a family solicitor and a mountain of parchment. (Laughter.) Mr. Mundella's Scotch Education Act was also, he had no doubt, as it was generally supported by Scotchmen, a very good measure, and he would have been glad if he could have added another, which was bracketted in the Queen's Speech with it—he meant the Welsh Education Act. (Cheers.) It was true they had done something to promote the higher education in Wales by voting £2000 to the College of Aber- ystwyth, and he was glad to hear his friend :Prof. Thorold Rogers say that it was the best investment of English money that had ever been made. (Cheers.) He hoped they might live to see the' walls of a new university college for North Wales rising in that county. (Renewed cheers.) It would not be the fault of his honourable friend and himself if that result did not follow. (Hear, hear.) But before they could carry this or any useful measure they must remodel the legislative machine. (Hear, hear.) The state of things in the House of Commons was a perfect disgrace to any civilized country at present. It was perfectly possible for a handful of twelve or twenty men to prevent any measure, good, bad, or indifferent, from becoming law. He made a calculation the other day, which proved that if every one of the thirty Irish Nation- alist party had merely spoken for a period of a quarter of an hour, and that was a very small allowance for an Irishman—(laughter)—on each one of the amendments set down to the Crimes Bill, they would have occupied 2500 hours, or rather more than the whole operative time of the session. (Laughter.) Sir Stafford Northcote might call it freedom of debate, but he called it Egyptian bond- age. (Laughter.) They had heard a good deal lately of the crowing of the Conservative cock- (laughter)-but he thought this cock must bear some relation to the French cock, which never crowed so lustily as when he was going to be well beaten. (Laughter, and cheers.) Of all places in the world, it had been crowing in Scotland, one of the most unpromising places for the Conservative party, with the exception of Wales. (Applause.) One would think to hear Conservatives talk that the whole Liberal programme was played out, whereas they had hardly touched the fringe of the Midlothian programme. (Cheers.) There were certain measures which they were bound to pass, and which it would be a disgrace if they did not pass, before a dissolution, namely, the Corrupt Practices Bill and the County Franchise Bill. (Cheers.) There were also other measures of the highest social and political importance. He was almost ashamed to mention the Bankruptcy Bill, he had mentioned it so often already. They must endeavour to pass that. Then there was the most important question of county government-a question he for one did not consider second to any other and with it and as a part of it there was the licensing question. (Applause.) They had got a Sunday Closing Bill for Ireland, and they had also got a Sunday Closing Bill for Wales. (Loud ap- plause.) They had all but got a Sunday Closing Bill for Cornwall, and he was told that there were at least a dozen other counties that were going to have Sunday Closing Bills of their own. That was all very well, and he did not object to it; but he would tell them what would, he thought, be better -namely, that each county should be allowed to pass a Sunday Closing Bill or other licensing act for itself. (Loud applause.) These were matters which he thought should be left entirely—or, at least, subject to such imperial supervision as the Legislature in its wisdom might think right-to the localities themselves. (Applause.) Of course, Sir Stafford Northcote and Mr. Gibson, his lieutenant, said," Oh, long before you can have these things you will be broken up by your own dissensions." lie COnlel not help thinking that before Sir Stafford Northcote twitted the Liberals with their dissensions it would be a very good thing if he would look a little nearer home. (Laughter.) There were unruly spirits in the House of Commons, but they did not all sit upon the Liberal benches and he could not help thinking that before Sir Stafford Northcote lectured other people on the question of discipline, he ought to see that he was master in his own house—(laughter)—and, what was more, he did not think that England or Scotland or Ireland or Wales would go out of their way to turn out Mr. Gladstone, and Sir W. Harcourt, and the Marquis of Hartington, and Lord Granville, and Mr. Trevelyan, in order to have Mr. Jem Lowther in Ireland, Mr. Eckroyd as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Ashmead Bartlett in the Foreign Office, and Mr. Warton in the Speaker's chair, perhaps. (Loud laughter.) He, on the contrary, believed with his friend Mr. Fawcett-than whom a better Radical did not sit in the House of Commons-(applause)- that the Liberal party were never so strong, never so united, as at the present moment; and he was perfectly certain that they were never so devoted in their allegiance and devotion to the grand old statesman-(loud applause)-who in these latter days had known how from the nettle of danger to pluck the flower of safety-who in darkness and in sunshine, whether on the crest of the wave or in the trough of the sea, had proved himself to be the safest as well as the most courageous pilot that had ever swayed the destinies of England. (Loud and prolonged applause).

FOOTBALL INTELLIGENCE.

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