BRITISH POLITICS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8389, 30 March 1907, Page 5

BRITISH POLITICS.

SPEECH BY LORD ROSEBERY. LONDON, March 27. Lord Rosebery, speaking at a meeting of the Council of the Liberal League,declared that the Government had pledged itself to the impossible in proposing this year to do something terrible with the House of Lords, and to deal with temperance reform, the land question, Army reorganisation, and Ireland. Ilis second apprehension was lest the party, through some of its members, would be permanently connected with a spirit of hostility to property in all its reforms. If so, the party would ere long be squeezed out between Socialism and Conservatism. He emphasised that the rock whereon Liberal Governments split, when defeated at a general election, arises from an apprehension of attacks by them on property, rather than from any other cause. This friendly warning might possibly be interpreted as the croakings of a retired raven on a withered branch. Lord Rosebery proceeded to criticise the introduction into Britain of the Irish system of dual ownership of land. He reviewed Ministerial utterances with regard to Home Rule, whence he inferred that the Government considered this an open question. Open questions were dangerous, and were apt to produce formidable breaches. There were two things which Britain would never tolerate—a tax on foodstuffs, and a separate Parliament for Ireland. The Tory Party was almost entirely identified with the one, and the Liberal Party was too largely identified with the other. Pie anticipated that the Government's Irish Bill would do no extreme violence, and would probably be chiefly administrative. This the league might be able to support, but if an independent Parliament was the ultimate goal —whereas we were delighted to see the self-government of colonies that were united to the Motherland only by the Crown, as in Australia and Canada —it was a very different matter when it was in a contiguous island, priding itself on the disloyalty of its public declarations. He did not believe they would hear further of the valedictory scheme for a university for Ireland which was proposed by the Hon. James Bryce just prior to his appointment as British Ambassador at Washington.

A BY-ELECTION. Received March 29, 9.51 a.m. LONDON, March 28. The Henham by-election resulted as follows: — Mr Hoult (Liberal) ... 5,401 Mr"Crates (Unionist) ... 4,244 The election was occasioned by the succession to the Peerage of the Hon. Hubert Beamumont.

ADMINISTRATION OF THE UNEMPLOYED ACT. Received March 29, 9.58 p.m. LONDON, March 29. Messrs Keir Hardie (M.P. for Merthyr Tydvil), J. R. Clynes (M.P. for Manchester North-East), and W. P. Thorn (M.P. for Clapham) denounced Mr John Burns' administration of the Unemployed Act. Mr' Burns retorted that Mr Keir Hardie was pressing schemes on to credulous workmen which were wasteful and mischievous and economiclly unsound. Mr Burns', threat to resign his portfolio provoked laughter.