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Now I have been thinking what can be the reason these men speak and write in so abusive a manner, and why are they scattering about statements that are untrue, and arguments utterly illogical? Well, I think I have discovered the reason. I feel certain they cannot themselves believe the wild statements they make, but it has flashed across my mind that they think we working men will believe them and be influenced by them. They well know the power we can exercise in the coming general election, and they expect to win us in this way to use our influence to turn the present Government out of office, and to bring them and their friends in. Now I feel indignant, terribly indignant, that we working men should be insulted, grossly insulted, in this kind of manner. We are being treated as fools. We are thought to be so ignorant that we cannot read and judge for ourselves, and that we shall swallow all these abusive and false utterances as if they were Gospel truth. We are told that the Conservative policy is, and has ever been, a policy of war. Now I am old enough to remember the public matters of the last over forty years, and I know that fourteen wars have been commenced during that period. Of these fourteen eleven were commenced by Liberals, and three by Conservatives. I can give the actual cases:—I. Affghan War, October 1, 1838, Lord Melbourne, L.; II. Chinese war, June 28, 1840, Lord Melbourne, L.; III. Syrian war, November 3, 1840, Lord Melbourne, L.; IV. Kaffir war, December 31, 1850, Lord John Eussell, L.; V. Crimean war, March 27, 1854, Lord Aberdeen and W. E. Gladstone, L.; VI. Chinese war, October 23, 1856, Lord Palmerston, L.; VII. Persian war, November 1, 1856, Lord Palmerston, L.; VIII. New Zealand war, June 30, 1860, Lord Palmerston, L.; IX. Chinese war, August 12, 1860, Lord Palmerston, L.; X. New Zealand war, November 20, 1863, Lord Palmerston, L.; XI. Ashantee war, September 29, 1873, W. E. Gladstone, L.; I. Abyssinian war, November 6, 1866, B. Disraeli, C.; II. Affghan war, 1878, Lord Beaconsfield, C; III. Zulu war, 1878, Lord Beaconsfield, C. We are treated as though we knew nothing of these actual occurrences, and as if we should believe, without any thought or inquiry, the false statement that the Conservative policy, and not the Liberal, is the policy of war. We are supposed to be entirely ignorant of the views of past statesmen—and they were gentlemen—on these subjects, as though we had never read Mr. Cobden's words, spoken in the House of Commons, "I declare before God and this House that I believe if the Tory Government had been in power we should have had no Crimean war!"
Not a word about our national prosperity. Here again are we
