Lord Fife has written a letter to the Secretary of
the Scottish Liberal Association resigning his presidency, on the ground that he cannot support a Government which is practi: Gaily committed to a dissolution of the Legislative Union, and that such a dissolution will be, in his belief, "a source of weakness to the country, and an admirable platform for further agitation to bring about complete legislative independence, if not eventual separation." Lord Fife's frank expression of opinion will probably make no immediate impression at all on the loyalty of Scotland to Mr. Gladstone, which is profound as well as enthusiastic. But it betokens, we think, a very con- siderable loss of moderate Liberals in England, and 'possibly some eventual accession to the influence of the Conservative Party even in Scotland. It is not Lord Fife's authority, but the intrinsic reasonableness of his view, which will, as time illustrates that reasonableness, strike the political imagination of the canny Scotch elector.
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