Lord Rosebery made a very amusing speech on Wednesday, in
opening a new Liberal Club at Brockley, in the Parliamen- tary borough of Greenwich. In the first place, he replied to Mr. Cowen's charge against the Government that they had coerced Parliament, remarking that even a Club would object if, because there was no special rule against its members bring- ing tame cobras into the writing-room, distinguished natural- ists chose to regard that practice as consistent with the Club's rules ; and he asserted that this was in effect what the Irish party had done, in their use of the forms of the House of Commons. Mr. Cowen, who, as Lord Rosebery pointed out was returned in great measure through the influence of Mr, Gladstone at Newcastle, was now attacking the Liberal party for its use of caucuses during the recent elections. But the truth is, Mr. Cowen justly distrusts the Liberals of Newcastle, and is making to himself friends of the Tories and the Irish, that when the Liberals fail, a party-amalgam, composed equally of Jingoes and Fenians, may receive him into their electoral habitations.
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