Mr. Balfour made a striking speech at Newcastle-on-Tyne on Tuesday,
where a Conference of the National Union of Conservative Associations was to be held. He remarked on Lord Roaebery's assertion that the question of reforming the House of Lords could not be better entered on than at a time when public feeling is perfectly calm and even indifferent on the subject. That was like making it a good reason for taking out a tooth,—that the tooth caused no pain, and indeed gave no kind of trouble. That was the sort of reason which would soon dispose of every tooth in one's head, so long as every one of them perfectly served its purpose. The proposal to pass a resolution in the House of Commons against the right of the House of Lords to veto measures passed by the House of Commons, seemed to Mr. Balfour a very feeble one. Why Lord Rosebery thought that no future Prime Minister would ever dare to propose the rescinding of such a resolution in the journals of the House of Commons, he could not conceive. Only last Session, Mr. Labouchere's resolution against the House of Lords was passed and subsequently obliterated at the proposal of the Government, and a second resolution of the House of Commons, on the subject of employing natives in the Civil Service of India, was, though never rescinded, calmly ignored by the Government as a foolish resolution that should never have been passed and would not be acted on. The example, therefore, of this very Government is quite opposed to the Prim s Minister's theory.
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