Mr. A. Peel, the late Liberal Whip, made an amusing
speech to his constituents at Warwick on Tuesday, on the inconsistency between the Tory charges against the late Government and the Tory mode of rectifying their predecessors' sins and blunders Everything Mr. Gladstone's Government had done was wrong ; the clock was now to be put back. The Army, under the administration of Mr. Cardwell, had gone to the bad. The Navy was in a state which demanded all the care which the successor to Mr. Goschen could afford to bestow on it. Our colonial empire had been disintegrated, and our prestige in foreign countries so lowered, that it was scarcely pos- sible for the country to be in a worse position than it had been daring the five years of the Liberal Administration. But when it came to the point, when the Conservatives were asked what measures they proposed as a remedy for this grievous state of things, thence-different expression came over their faces, and they admitted that things had been exaggerated, and explained that they were not prepared to say that the Navy demanded any
great reconstruction There was to be a perfect calm. No more medicine, no more doctors' bills ; a perfect cure will be effected with the Revalenta Arabica." That is good chaff, but the truth is that political Revalenta Arabica is the natural resource of true Conservatism, which, on principle, avoids a drastic policy even of reaction. The violence while out of office was not properly Conservative ; the tameness, while in, is- And while the country remains equally tame, most probably the Conservatives will stay where they are,—so long at least as the Revalenta Arabica goes on, so long as Venenum Israeliticum, the potent religious stimulus, is not exhibited in place of it by the Conservative Prime Minister.
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