THE GRAND OLD MAN OF ENGLAND A BAD MAN.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 2658, 25 July 1889, Page 2

THE GRAND OLD MAN OF ENGLAND A BAD MAN.

TO THK KDITOR. Sut, —Believers in Mr Gladstone believe him to be a man who has seen the error of his ways, and that in his Home Rule movement his motives are righteous and holy. [ will give undeniable facts which will show that his motives are devilish. It will not be denied that he had the will to go in for coercion, imprisonment and eviction with great and fearful severity had be the power to do so, and begged, beseeched, implored and prayed for this power to imprison, shoot and hang ; and that when the people of England refused to give him this power, he at once turned round to break up the Empire, at the risk to Ireland of an internal war, the horrors of which would, from race and religion, have been awful to contemplate. I will give his own words to show that it is not holy motives that move him ; I will give his own words to show that love of personal power alone has moved him, and this devilish desire for personal power has made him a devil. At the last general election he made a speech to his constituents in Edinburgh ; this speech was not intended alone for his voters but was an address to the whole of the Empire. Well, in this speech ho begged and implored tfie country to give hira a majority in the House large enough to defeat the Tories and Home Rulers combined. Now, it is quite evident that he could not want a majority to defeat the Homo Rulers and Tories, so as to give Homo Rule to Ireland ; it would be a contradictory absurdity to suppose so. Ho could only want a majority to carry on his past policy of coercion, eviction and imprisonment, a policy which he, up to and at the time of making this speech, never, by word or deed, gave simi that he would alter. The people of Kngland did not give him this majority, and so his power was gone. The love of power is a passion to which the love of money is as mere nothing; this love of power will transform a man from being a fair and just man into a demon. This love of power will transform a man who would look with horror at killing a trout into a man who would cut out a policy that would massacre millions of his fellowmen. As I have already said, it takes humanity from him. The loss of power Mr Gladstone could not stand, and so from being a man he became a devil in his motives, and under the clap-trap of making people believe his motives are holy, in their eyes he becomes a hero of love and justice. —Yours, &c, IIARAFIM, July 20th, 1880.