Lord Rosebery made an amusing speech at Inverness on Thursday,
but it is not a speech which increases our estimate of him as a statesman. After remarks on the Land Question, he gave vent to some lively chaff on "Liberal Unionism," which he regarded rather as a nickname than as a name,--an odd remark, as Liberal Unionism is certainly the name which the Liberal Unionists chose for themselves, while nicknames are usually conferred by others, and not exactly by admirers. After these preliminaries, he plunged into the Home-rule Question ; and after pointing out the enormous difficulty of separating Imperial from local questions, and suggesting, therefore, that a true federal Constitution,—which should leave Irish questions to Irish treatment, but should summon all the Irish Members for Imperial questions,—was exposed to insuperable difficulties, he suggested that the problem might be solved by greatly reducing the number of Irish representa- tives in the Imperial Parliament at Westminster, and then letting them vote on all sorts of questions, English or other- wise. We have discussed this suggestion in another column, but it seems to us to combine rather happily the difficulties of every other solution that has been proposed, without greatly attenuating any of them.
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