In the evening the Unionist Free-Trade Club held a dinner.
The chairman, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, after dealing with the question of the duty of the House of Lords to the Education Bill in the same spirit as the Duke of Devonshire, declared that people were already asking, and that more would ask as time went on, whether the cause of the Union, the cause of religious education, the position of the House of Lords, and the other great issues for which the Con- servative and Unionist Party had stood in the past, were to be imperilled by being linked together with the miserable policy of taxing the food of the people. He would ask his Conservative friends in particular whether they thought it safe for the destiny of their party that they should come under the domination of, and take their orders from, the most conspicuous advocate of secular education and of the dis- establishment of the Church, and the inventor and patentee of the doctrine of ransom. Lord James of Hereford in an impressive speech went even further than the Duke of Devon- shire and Lord Balfour of Burleigh in warning the House of Lords as to the necessity for circumspection in dealing with the Education Bill. For ourselves, we will only say, as we have said elsewhere, that though the House of Lords must not forget their duty to the nation, they must be most careful to avoid even the appearance of taking their orders from Mr. Chamberlain.
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