If Lord Randolph Churchill had no past the two speeches
which he made at Perth on Saturday last would place him among the foremost champions of the Union. As it is, their force is sadly discounted by the distrust which it is impossible to dissociate from the politician who made them. At the afternoon meeting, Lord Randolph said, in regard to his public action since he left the Ministry : "I have striven for one object, and one object alone, and that was the consolidation and increased strength of the Unionist Party,"—a sufficiently astonishing announcement when we remember the course pursued by him as to Irish Local Government in the spring before last, and last autumn as to the Suakim Expedition. Next, Lord Randolph varied his old description of the Liberal Unionists as the crutch of the Tory Party, by pointing out in somewhat more complimentary terms how they act as a lightning-conductor for Gladstonian abuse.
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