SPEECH BY LORD ROSEBERY.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XLIX, Issue 12635, 24 October 1905, Page 5

SPEECH BY LORD ROSEBERY.

MR. WISE TAKEN TO TASK

United Press Association. —Copyright.

Received October 23, 9.52 p.m

LONDON, October 23

Lord Rosebery, speaking at Edinburgh, controverted Mr. Wise's recent Edinburgh speech, which he described as airing the fly-blown fallacies of protection. He asked whether it was consistent with the dignity of an ex-Min-ister of the Crown to come 13,000 miles to stigmatise one of the groat political parties as having no policy but one of stagnation and drift. He was wholly out of sympathy with Imperial ideas, and was ignorant of Imperial aspirations. ''I am inclined to think," said Lord Rosebery, "that when our old friend Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerrnan returns from a well-earned holiday to take command of the Liberal fortress, the last epithet applicable to the party will be that of 'stagnant.' " Lord Rosebery proceeded to challenge Mr. Wise to prove by a plebiscite in his State that the colonies are, as he says, in enthusiastic sympathy with the Tory Party banner. On one side there would be the Liberal Party, with freedom of "trade and freedom of Empire, and th«* banner of the Tory Party on the other side, with Chinese labour. If the Australians responded, as Mr. Wise anticipated, we would know that they who had put their hands and strength forward in the war and fought so efficiently in South Africa would not restore it to Britain's paramount interests, but would introduce into South Africa Chinese labour, nob one iota whereof would be allowed to enter their own precincts He hoped the Liberal Party, when it resumed power, would earnestly strive to do more than it heretofore had done to win the confidence of the outer Britains of Tlie Empire. He added that the Empire had been built up only by Liberalism.