Lord Salisbury on Wednesday attended the annual dinner of the
Associated Chambers of Commerce, and delivered a highly optimistic speech. If we trusted the newspapers, he said, we should find that our trade was decaying all over the world, and "that we had nothing to look forward to but a rapid descent into obscurity." He did not, however, find, when ho met commercial men, that any such feeling oppressed them. He fancied that the German spectre owed its origin mainly to newspaper writers at a loss for "copy." That is rather a literary way of putting the facts, but it is true that most of the alarm spread by Consuls is a mere impatience of competition, and that English trade does very well, as is shown both by its increased volume and the Income-tax returns. If in commercial matters Parliament had a fault, it was, said the Premier, a tendency to enforce restrictions which deterred capital from entering on new speculations. Capital might strike as well as labour,—a caution also uttered by Prince Bismarck. Altogether, it seems evident that Lord Salisbury, though he grows old, and cannot like the situation at many points, has not been captured by the prevailing pessimism. As pessimists rarely do anything but object, that is well.
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