HOME POLITICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 26 January 1920, Page 5

HOME POLITICS.

SPEECH BY MR. ASQUITH. i • THE COALITION CRITICISED. By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright, Received Jan. 25, 5.6 p.m. London, Jan. 24. Mr. Asquith, speaking at Cambridge, recalled that forty years ago there were only two Parties. Now Labor was the most formidable rival. He said that Lord Haldane's magnificent and unparalleled services to the country would be vindicated by tkne, and before long. He expressed the opinion that the heaviest indictment of the Coalition Government was that while the Peace Conference was redistributing territories, re-painting maps, and shouldering impossible burdens, it made no serious or sustained attempt to secure even a foundation for possibilities of peace with Russia. The Coalition's Russian policy was ill-inspired and mistaken from the first. Such a large community as Russia must decide for itself, whether rightly or wrongly, whether for ill or good, its own form of Government. Now, at last, the Government had apparently settled on a policy, namely, a refusal to enquire. Could there be a better illustration of the drawbacks of a Coalition Government than this iig-zag, this series of compromises, improvisations, accommodations, insincerities, and inconsistencies ?

Dealing with Home Rule, he said that it! was impossible to govern Ireland with coercion in one hand, and conciliation in the other. The only way that Ireland could be made loyal to the Empire was to apply the principles of the League of Nations giving to the Irish people, in the most complete and most uncompromising form, control over her own officers.

He declared that the Anti-Dumping Bill not only violated all the principles of free trade, but also the fundamental principles of Liberalism. But for the Liberal Government, of which he had been head, we should have had no enfranchised democracy, we should have had greatly restricted and monopolised trade, and we should have had Labor still at the mercy of Capital. It was by following the principles of the liberal Party, and this alone, that we could secure for the country a destiny worthy of its past.—Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn. SEEKING A SEAT. MR. ASQUITH FOR PAISLEY. Received Jan. 25, 5.5 p.m. London, Jan. 22. Mr. Asquith has accepted the Paisley invitation. The Paisley Unionists' Association has selected Mr. MacKean as the Coalition candidate, and there are also prospects of the extreme Laborites adopting Mr. Owen as their candidate.—Aus.N.Z. Cable Assn. [The figures for the Paisley seat at the last general election were:—Sir T. McCallum (L.), 7,542; J. M. Biggar (C0.0p.), 7,436; John Taylor (Co.N.D.P.), 7.201.]