Excerpt from Sir Edward Clark: Her Majesty's Solicitor General Public Speeches 1880-1890

Gentlemen, - The death of the senior member for your Borough, my old friend Mr. John Locke, who had for many years been held in deserved esteem by all classes among his constituents, affords you an opportunity of expressing your opinion upon the conduct of public affairs.

The questions before you for consideration are of national importance, and the judgment which shall be expressed by the great constituency of Southwark will materially influence the opinion and the action of the country at large.

During the last six years a Conservative Government has directed the policy, and conducted the administration, of Great Britain, under the accumulated difficulties of foreign war, depressed commerce, failing harvests, and the most malicious and unscrupulous Opposition which the history of this country records. As a Conservative, I ask you fairly to consider the title which that Government has established to your confidence and support.

In Eastern Europe the policy of Her Majesty's Government has received the justification of complete success. The Berlin Treaty has not only for the past eighteen months secured the peace of Europe, but has dissolved the formidable triple alliance, which hindered the progress of Constitutional freedom, and menaced the independence of the smaller States. At the great council which gathered at Berlin, the representatives of Great Britain spoke in the name of a people who were anxious for honourable peace, but had shown themselves ready to bear the burdens and anxieties of war. The firm and resolute will of Lord Beaconsfield was shared and sustained by the great majority of his countrymen, and the jealousies and ambitions which had threatened Europe with the horrors of wide-spreading war disappeared before the peaceful and unselfish but unwavering policy of the people of Great Britain.

In Afghanistan the Liberal Government of 1868-74 nad succeeded in disturbing and alienating the Ameer, and in providing for Russia an opportunity for unofficial war against this country, of which, in the crisis of the European difficulties, she gladly availed herself. To have remained quiescent would have been to expose our Indian Empire to the danger of an invasion, of whose time and place we should have had no warning, of whose strength we could make no estimate, and whose retreat we could not follow. The emergency was firmly met, the passes of the North-Western frontier are now in our hands, and the chief danger which threatened the safety of our empire in India is finally dispelled.

In South Africa a war, for which the Home Government was in no way responsible, has ended in the destruction of a barbaric military organization which disturbed the peace and hindered the progress of our colonies.

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