Opinions of the Press on Mr Gladstone's Speeches.

Thames Star, Volume XI, Issue 3459, 26 January 1880, Page 2

Opinions of the Press on Mr Gladstone's Speeches.

(Glasgow News.) However serious a view we take of Mr Gladstone's purpose in coming to Scotland, it is impossible to ignore the ludicrous element which entered so largelj into the proceedings on his line of march. We do not want to lay undue stress on the Langholm suit of clothes or the Galashiels breeches—Mr Gladstone will probably do that himself; but it does not seem to us that the whole series of presentations, addresses, and speeches were a rather absurd farce acted with unnecessary solemnity. So far as the presentations go, they do not exceed in absurdity the previous gifts of a silver axe and a silver-headed walking stick which Mr Gladstone received. They merely confirm the general eccentricity of Mr Gladstone's admirers, and Mr Gladstone's capacity for acknowledging stupid presentations with appropriate silliness. The only detail worth noticing in,connec* tion with them is, that the plaid presented to' Mr Gladstone at Galashiels ought clearly to have been of the Buccleuch instead of the Stuart tartan. With regard to the-addresses, they were so numerous that Mr Gladstone professed he had not time to read them .all, while in some instances they were hurriedly thrust into his hand as if he were a pillar letter-box just about to be cleared.

(Times.) ****!: Mr Gladstone read to his audience the indictment he intended to maintain ; and it is hard to find in his speech any serioui attempt to establish it. He " holds that the faith and honour of the country hare been gravely compromised in the foreign policy of the Ministry ; that by the disturbance of confidence, and lately even of peace, they have prolonged and aggravated the public distress; that they hare augmented the power and influence of the Russian Empire; " and so on. He certainly reiterates these charges more than | once in the course of his speech; but he has failed to approach eren the first of them. He endeavours to show, indeed, that a wrong policy was adopted at the crisis of the Eastern Question, though his argument on that bead by no means boars most hardly on the Ministry. Bat that is a long way from showing that "'• the faith and honour of the country hare been grarely compromised." After all, to what does Mr Gladstone's case reduce itself P The sum and sub* stance of the policy he would hare pur* sued is that he would hare coerced Turkey before the Russian war by the force of united Europe. The substance of the Ministerial policy is that Turkey has been coerced since the war by means of a Congress of European Powers at Berlin in respect to her European pro* rinces, and that England is now exerting pressure upon her Asiatic prorinces. Let it be allowed there are differences in point

of wisdom between the two policies; but is the difference so vast as to justify Mr Gladstone's fiery indignation.