The Evening Star TUESDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1909.

Evening Star, Issue 14187, 12 October 1909, Page 4

The Evening Star TUESDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1909.

One cannot withhold a tribute of admiraI tion from the House of I The Lords Lords. Their amendment I and Ireland, and rejection of Government Bilb, sent up to them backed by the largest popular majorities that Parliament has known, for a generation, extort an astonishment that is not wholly indignant. "The people's will must and shall prevail," declared the late Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman, amid the ringing cheers of his supporters, when Mr Birrell's mangled Education. Bill was sent down from " another place." But the Lords, unmoved, proceeded to throw out a second great policy measure—the Licensing Bill—and again the air resounded with the angry but impotent threats of the. Government and tto ; sappoxters, , Last 4

week a iSird important Bill, that dealing with Irish, .Land Purchase—which Mr Birrell some- time since declared must go through, or ho would retire from the Irish Chief Secretaryship— was so altered by the same impenitent House that the heart was taken out of it and out of the Minister who sponsored it. Clause 41, which empowers the Irish Estates Commissioners to acquire compulsorily land outside of the congested districts—the vital clause of the Bill, in fact—has-been deleted by the Lords. The Nationalists are therefore up in arms. There was a .stiff contest, though the issue was never in doubt, over this clauseduring its passage through the House of Commons. The Ulster Unionists, helped by Mr Butcher, the member for Cambridge University, made a bitter and violent onslanght both upon the contents of the- BUI and on the Minister who was the author of what was designated an attempt to legalise "friction, jobbery, and corruption." Mr Butcher concluded his speech, with a striking picture of ''that barren strip of land along the west coast, which contuns the worst soil in the worst climate of the most inaccessible region. of Ireland, and where families crowded together on patches of rock and bog barely attain to the lowest level of human existence," and he came to the lame conclusion that the best that could bo done was to abolish the Congested Districts Board.altogether. As for the unfortunates who were landless—well, they must go elsewhere. "Where?" interjected a voice. "In the grave," promptly replied the member for Cork City. Mr' Chiles Craig, the Unionist member for South Antrim, undismayed bv the shouts of the Nationalists, bluntly told the House of Commons that lie trusted that " the proposals of the Government will receive such treatment in the House of Lords as they undoubtedly deserve." Deserved or undeserved, they hare now received that treatment. Nor is it likely that the Lords will recede from their attitude. They know that the Government have to face the electors on their Budget within a few months, and on the principle that one may as well hang for a sheep as for a lamb they propose to pass no legislation ot which they disapprove. Their action would seem to indicate that the Unionists are not prepared to compromise with Air John E. Redmond.

Mr W. T. Stead, in the course of a recent

magazine article, anticiWorse than pated much of what is Limehouse." being said to-day by the T1 , Opposition Press of Mr Lloyd-George. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, according to these impartial critics is setting class against class, indulging in demagogy, and uttering "rhetorical falsehoods.-' Hk Newcastle speech, it j s solemnly affirmed, is worse than his Lime-hci-fie one, which, the world knows, was really too shocking for honest men to hear. -Mr Stead claims that the demagogue, in the best, sense of the term, is the true leader of men. He it is who interprets the aspirations and needs of the masses, who clothes them in the graces of oratory' who proclaims them with a. power and an eloquence that capture and convince ; and who stands firm amid all assaults and threats for a reformed and nobler humanity. In this class Mt Stead places Gladstone and Bright. Chamberlain and Randolph Churchill, Lloyd-George and Winston Churchill. They were and are demagogues of the right stamp, and they appear in pairs. Objection might possibly bo taken to coupling the name of Randolph Churchill with that of Joseph Chamberlain. The father of Winston Churchill, at his best, was never much more than the brilliant politician. He lacked the moral fervor, the impassioned sincerity of Gladstone and Bright, and his social ideals were, superficially at least, other than those of the one whom he once termed a "pinchbeck Robespierre." Still, he was a democrat and a demagogue. -As for Mr Chamberlain, he was thirty years ago " the man of sin," " the leveller," the "Radical Jo" who was going to "down" the Throne and the Lords and divide the spoils among his Tabble rout. To-day it is Mr Lloyd-George who is honored with these complimentary epithets, and it is Mr Winston Churchill who causes men to grow angry. Wo need have no hesitation in believing that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is neither a rogue nor a fool. He is one of the most able men in English public life, and he occupies his commanding position wholly by sheer force of brain and character. To charge 6Uch a man with falsehood, as 'The Times' has done and as the 'Pall Mall Gazette' is doing, is too foolish for words. Mr IJovdGeorgo speaks by- the book, and while hi 3 conclusions are open to question, to answer !iim by the hurling of names (that never hurt the assailed) and by the shooting of tongues is neither good manners nor sound logic.

It is not usual to stop, on the ere of his departure, the duly-accre-A Taikative dited representative of Diplomatist, his country to a foreign Court. Wo may therefore regard with suspicion the cable stating that Mr Charles R. Crane, of Chicago, the newly-appointed United States Minister to Pekin, had been "suddenly stopped " because, according to the' ' New York Sun,' he had been showing himself too talkative for a diplomatist. Mr Crane is not that sort of man, and a post x which many Americans regard as the most onerous and responsible in the gift of the President, and which it had taken Mr Taft many months jto consider before selecting his man, is riot likely to havo been filled by the wrong person. On the contrary, all that is known of Mr Crane leads to the conclusion that there are not many men better able to fill it. He is financially independent, being the head of the well-known Crane Company; he ie a man, of exceptional abilities, widely travelled; he is a reade;- of books in twelve different languages (including Persian and Chinese), six- of which he can speak with ease; and he has taken his share in nranicipal politics. He know.s China and its people as few know them; and he is a man of excellent private repute and, politically, not of the samo party as President Taft. Men of this stamp are not given to let their tongnes wag injudiciously. We should be disposed to believe that if Mr Crane has been " stopped " it is hot in ■ order to be reprimanded or disgraced, but to receive his final instructions on some subject of pressing importance, in which, possibly, new developments havo since his selection.