IMPERIAL POLITICS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6886, 23 June 1890, Page 4

IMPERIAL POLITICS.

The Government proclamation forbidding Tipperary meetings was again defied on May 27. Messrs Dillon and O'Brien held a meeting just outside the town of Cashel, and spoke to immense crowds. The gatherings were several times interrupted, but were resumed with determined persistence. Bodies of police charged with their batons, but finally, the policemen's efforts proving unavailing, a troop of hus3ar9 was called upon to charge. The affair then assumed the proportions of a riot. Many were injured by the police and soldiers, and some of the latter were also hurt. . Mr Gladstone predicts an early general election. In the course of a speech at Hawarden on May 27, he denounced the Bill for the compensation of publicans who were deprived of their licenses. The whole control of the license system, he said, ought to be vested in the local bodies. It would add .£300,000,000 to the national debt to purchase publicans' licenses. In reply to a delegation concerning the eight hours question, which waited on him on May 21, Lord Salisbury declared the limitation of a day's work to eight hours impossible. The system meant ruin to small concerns. Timo and wages should be regulated in accordance with the capacity of capital. He was opposed to anything like compulsory measures. It is rumoured that tho Queen wanted to make her daughter Beatrice Duchess of Sussex, but Lord Salisbury declared that he would resign if such a step were taken. English people, he said, regarded the peerage as no longer a mere appendage of the Crown, but a rank created by the British Constitution, only to bo conferred as a mark of royal favour, and in the most exceptional cases.