Mr, Goscen had been down to Edinburgh during the week whose papers were brought by the Ravenna, to counteract the effect of Mr. Gladstone's speech, but Mr. Goschen, though a weighty, is not an attractive speaker, and he does not seem to hi eked much enthusiasm. The Opposition journals of course make the most of his speech, but their notices of it have much more about Mr. Gladstone in them than about Mr. Goschen, As a statesman, Me. Goschen has been a disappointment. Nwenty years ago he was looked upon as fature Prime Minister of England probable successor to Mr. Gladston leadership of the liberal Party, but he hus maintained his position mind. He has missed his tip, younger men hare supplanted him. 'OF speech at Edinburgh the Standard says:
Nothing comes more easily to Mr. Goschen the work of critical analysis, and there is no portion of the people of Great Britain which enjoys more keenly an intellectual exercise of this kind than the shrewd public of the Scottish capital. Yet the strict regard for logical form was found to be quite con-that glow which an eager and tic gathering expects—even in the eminently rational atmosphere of arch. The contrast, indeed, between the tone of the two addresses was sufficiently striking. Gladstone was obviovaly at fault in his politi cal scent. He betrayed, in the strange mix. ture of ambiguities and menaces of speech was compounded, the consciousness that there was an absolute need of affecting a confidence which was foreign to his inner thoughts. Anxious to wound the House of Lords and the Unionist Party, he was yet afraid to strike. Even his threats, there was reason to suspect, were intended in a large measure only to please the more violent ani unthinking of his own mixed following, while his misty references to the projects of the future were similarly construed as artifices by which the unfeeling pressure of the impatient groups was for the moment to be reduced. Mr. Goschen, on the other hand, was in a ion to speak with absolute freedom and lainness, to avow a sincere belief, not only in the justice, but in the triumph of the Unionist cause.
The Daily News passes over the speech in contemptuous silence, which it would not dare to do if Mr, Goschen were the power he was ance esteemed to be, The North British Daily Mait say Mr. Goschen's ambitions attempt to answer Mr. Gladstone in Edinburgh was a ludicrous failure. Even in his opening sentences Mr. Goschen blundered such a way as to raise a laugh against himself. He began with the boast that the Tories were not fighting a losing cause, and that they had not lost the fight. Does not everybody know that they have lost the fight both in the country and in the House of Comnons? Why, Mr. Goschen himself was the very personification of defeat, standing in the city which had dismissed him from its service. Mr. Goschen was troubled because the Government declined to dissolve Parliament until they have 'a number of measures of reform, aod he was very anxious to know when the Home Rule Bill was to be reintroduced, He will learn in due time, but that does not satisfy him. "In the name of all that did not the Prime Minister tell them what was straightforward and plan, he asked, why he was going to do? That was Mr. Goschen's climax, and there we leave him. It is a cuse of "Laughter holding both his sides" when that which is straightforward and plain is invoked by "Jokim the Juggler."
More important, however; than the question of whether Mr, Gladstone or Mr. Goschen has made the more convincing speech to the electors of Midlothian is the question whether the Chartered Company are to crush Lobengula or to see their pioneers wiped out by the "dusky old savage," of whom, however, most travellers write with kindly feeling. But when some two thousand white settlers get into the black man's country, the black mun, right or wrong, has to submit or get him out, and abstract morality has to bow to manifest destiny. Of course, if Mr. Rhodes and his followers were Frenchmen or Russians, nothing would excuse the immorality of their action, The wire tells us thia morning that Me, Labouchere has represented in the House the views that hw has long enunciated in Tinsth, Tu his issue of the Sth of October he say; A certain number of persons get hold of a large tract of land in Africa by fooling native potentate out of a concession. They convert this concession into a Company, One portion of the capital consists of shaves for which nothing has been paid. These they lay hold of, The other portion i< made up of shares for which the public has paid cash. Thi cash is soon spent, But before the bubble has burst the speculators manage to sell a large number of their shares, Bank. rupted stares the Company in the face, on which they endeavour to get up a quarrel with the native potentate from whom they have obtained their concession, and call upon the Imperial Government to allow them to rob him of what remains to him, and, if robbing for them at the cost of provide them with soldiers who the taxpayer.
Look at the Chartered Company of South Africa, It is true that Mr. Cecil Rhodes and his gang created a Company with capital of £1,000,000, on which nothing was paid, and that they are"most anxious to sell the shares of this Company for cash to investers. It is equally true that they formed a Company of another the shares of which they took and paid for; and, having done so, foreed them up to " preimiumn of above 500, when they kindly parted with many of them to fools. It is true that this second Company has to pay one-half of all net profits to the frst Company. 'True also. that. the second Company has spent the million, and has nothing to show for it, and is now worth £500,00" less than nothing. 'True, too, that it is very improbable that there is' gold in paying quantity in Mashonaland, But what of all this? Mere incidents. Hav. ing made much money by palming off worthless shares to idiots who fancied that Mashonaland was a Land of Ophi game. What prevents them? The presence of the owner of Matabeleland with 20,000 fighting men. Obviously this objectionable owner ought to be ejected. Is he not a cruel sayas 2 Does he not maltreat some of his subjects? Ought such " man to be allowed tostond in the way of civilisation and Christian progress? Perish the thought! He ought to be replaced by a number of Christian gold seekers, and, whether there be gold or not in his country. it ought to become the property of the South African Chartered Company, in order to enable Mr. Cecil Rhodes and his friends to make money by announcing that the land is auriferous, and by persuading British investors: to believe them, and to purchase shares of the Company.
What renders the position in South Africa difficult for the Imperial Government is the duality of Mr. Cecil Rhodes. He is at once the Premier of the Cape Colony and the head of the South Africa Company. This is as though Mr. Gladstone were British Prime Minister and the Chairman of the East Africa Company; and I need hardly say that such a duality would not for a moment be tolerated
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.