MR. DAVITT IN ABERDEEN.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVIII, Issue 9, 25 June 1886, Page 23

MR. DAVITT IN ABERDEEN.

Mb. Dayitt delivered an address in Aberdeen, on Monday night, April 24, under the auspices of the Junior Liberal Association of Aberdeen. The spacious music hall, which seats over 3,000 people, was packed to overflowing by an audience in undoubted sympathy with Mr. Davitt and his subject. The chair was taken by Professor Minto, who was supported on the platform by Mr. Esslemonl, M.P,Rev. C. Macdonald, Established Church ; Mr. Bissett, President of the Aberdeen Trades' Council, and ihe Executive of the Junior Liberal of Association Aberdeen by whom Mr. Davitt had been invited. Mr. Davitt began his address by referring to the recent meeting of slender dimensions which was held in the same buildings by the Loyal and Patriotic Union a wetk ago, and compared Dr. Hanna and the Ulster Orangemen who tried to enlist the Scotch people in the anti-Home Rule crusade to Artemus Ward, who generously offered all his wife's relations to the ranks of the Federal army (loud laughter), And to Dr. Hnnna's attacks upon Mr. Parnell and his followers. Mr, Davitt said he could best reply in the language of a generous and manly opponent whose words would carry more conviction to the minds of unprejudiced men than all the reckless raving and unscrupulous staiemeuts of the entire itinerant company of loyal and patriotic calumniators. Earl Spencer (loud cheers) speaking iv Newcastle recently deciarad : "This I must 6ay that I, for one, believe these men to have the lr affection and a real interest in the welfare of their country. I believe that with the full responsibilities upon them they vrill know that the only true way of attaining the happiness and contentment of Ireland is for her Government to maintain kw nnd order, and to defend the rights and privileges of every class and every man in the country " (cheers). Alter dealing

with Mr. Gladstone's scheme and the various objections which are urged against it, Mr. Davitt declared that the granting of auch a constitntion to Ireland was bnt the beginning of a commoasense movement to relieve the Imperial Parliament from work which it cannot and should not be asked to perform (cheers). To render the Imperial Parliament capable of attending to imperial matters it will become absolutely necetsary to delegate to national assemblies the complete management of their respective local matters, from which assemblies delegations or representatives will then be returned to the Imperial Parliament for deliberation and legislation upon purely Imperial concerns (cheers). Pending this carrying out of such a scheme of federation, the safest and the wisest policy to pursue towards Ireland is not to insist upon a representation in Westminster as well as in a National Assembly in Dublin. Referring to the character of the anti-Home Rule movement, Mr. Davitt asserted that the cries of " integrity of the Empire " and " Ulster loyalty " were largely landlord cries, and meant the integrity of landlord power to rob labour and loyalty to that system of legalised theft. The landlords of the three countries dread the principle of the Irith land agitation as much as they fear a unity of feeling and purpose on social reformt between the democracies of England and Ireland and Scotland (loud cheers). The landlords best policy is to perpetuate race hatred and religious animosities among the peoples of these islands, as this is the one and only means by which they can hope to maintain the iniquitous system of landlordism by and throngh which they can tax the labour and the enterprise of the farmers, and monopolise so much of the wealth which agricultural industry and the labouring community produce (cheers). Mr. Cooper of the Junior Liberal Association, proposed a resolution expressing the confidence of the meeting in Mr. Gladstone and support for his measure of self-government for Ireland. The resolution was passed amidst great enthusiasm, only one man, amidst loud laughter, dissenting.