On Tuesday the _King, aceompanied by the Queen, Opened Parliament
in state. - --The King's Speech, though- it excited the derision of the Opposition speakers, was exactly what a Government who know that their fate is scaled ought to have written in the circumstances. They could not, of course, propose Protection, as that was forbidden by the results of the General Election, but they could show their appreciation of the fact that unem- ployment is still extremely bad, and that, apart from Protection, there arc various means—most of them un- controversial—of dealing with it. This is just what they did in drawing up the King's Speech. They did not fly into a tantrum or indulge in admonitory heroics, but they said plainly what might be done just as though they had the expectation of remaining in office and of seeing the thing through themselves. That is the only right way. It was not their business to assume the course of events ; it was their business to offer a policy for carrying on the King's Government even if an Egyptian plague should lay low to-morrow the whole of the two Opposition parties.
