A great Free-trade demonstration was held last Saturday in Edinburgh,
at which Lord Rosebery delivered two important speeches. He criticised with much acuteness and a great deal of wit Mr. Balfour's attempt in his recent speech to shift the responsibility for the early mistakes of the war from himself and his colleagues. Passing to the fiscal question, he declared that the policy of Mr. Balfour was not distin- guishable from Mr. Chamberlain's. "He himself apparently says : ` Go forth, my son, with my blessing. If you are unsuccessful, may that benediction keep you warm. If you are successful, I shall be delighted to fold you back to my toms and to adopt your policy."' Mr. Balfour's methods were hardly consonant with the usual methods of English public men. Lord Rosebery admirably summed up the attitude of one type of politician " as a man sympathising with Mr. Chamberlain, as a politician following Mr. Balfour, and as a business man wanting to know what we were going to get from the Colonies in return." He then turned to the main point of his speech, and showed how there is no real benefit in Mr. Chamberlain's scheme for British agriculture. Wheat-growing would be so stimulated in the Colonies that the British farmer would have to face a far more dangerous and permanent rival.
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