Lord Salisbury made a vigorous speech at a banquet of
the City Conservative Club on Wednesday. The Unionist meeting -of the previous day had given him, ho said, the utmost confidence that resistance on behalf of the fundamental principles of our -Constitution "is not that hopeless matter which some would like to induce you to imagine." He insisted, however, that the -Conservatives were quite as Conservative as ever. "Undoubtedly there are points upon which, if they came forward, we should be compelled to differ from our allies, or from some of our allies among the Liberal Unionists ; but, fortunately, these points are in the background." "The straightforwardness and simplicity of intention with which we have been met by Lord Hartington and those who follow him, have made co-operation with them a. very easy task indeed." Mr. Mundella, said Lord Salisbury, had charged the Conservatives with masquerading in other people's principles and other people's clothes, a course to which, in Mr. John Morley's language, a highwayman's life would be preferable. That was a charge which sounded as if it were made against the Gladstonians for masquerading in Parnellite prin- ciples and clothes ; but in the sense in which it was made, Lord Salisbury utterly denied it. And he went on to defend the policy announced in relation to local government and procedure, as essentially Conservative in the circumstances in which it had been resolved upon.
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