THE LIBERALS AND THE COLONIES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXIV, Issue 13888, 24 October 1905, Page 5

THE LIBERALS AND THE COLONIES.

! A SPEECH BY LORD ROSEBERY. AN ATTACK ON MR WISE’S VIEWS. United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright LONDON, October 23. Lord Rosebery, speaking at Edinburgh, controverted Mr B. R. Wise’s recent Edinburgh speech, which he described as “ airing fly-blown fallacies of protection.” He asked whether it was consistent with the dignity of an ex-Minister of the Crown to come 13,000 miles to stigmatise one of the great political parties as having no policy but one of stagnation and drift, that it was wholly out of sympathy' with Imperial ideas, and was ignorant of Imperial aspirations. “I am inclined to think,” he said, “that when my eld friend Sir Henry. Camp-bell-Bannerman returns from a well-earned holiday to take command of the Liberal fortress the last epithet applicable to the party will be thlat of ‘ stagnant.’ ” Lord Rosebery proceeded to challenge Mr .Wise -to prove by a plebiscite in his State that the colonies are, as he says, in enthusiastic sympathy the Tory Party. The banner on one side would be that of the Liberal Party, with freedom of trade and freedom of Empire; the banner of the Tory Party on the other side, with Chinese labour. “If Australians responded as Mr Wise anticipated, we will know that they put their hand’s strength in the war and fought so efficiently in South Africa, not to restore to Britain her paramount interests, but to introduce into South Africa Chinese labour, not one iota whereof is allowed to enter their own precincts.” He hoped that the Liberal Party, when it resumed power, would earnestly strive to do more than it had heretofore done to win the confidence of the outer Britains of.the Empire. He added that the Empire had been built up only by Liberalism.