There are, it appears, points outside the business of the
Foreign Office upon which Lord Salisbury and Lord Rose.. bery agree. In a very able speech on Friday week against the Bishop of London's Bill for reducing the number of Public-houses and abolishing clubs for drinking, the late Premier observed that the Bill was really based on an objection to all drinking of alcohol in any form, and "would lead, to nothing less than ethical persecution." It was the old human weakness cropping up again which made men per. secute a religious dogma. Lord Rosebery is of the same Opinion; and on Saturday, while opening the Bishopsgate Institute, he told the managers not to imitate "those great and good men" who had taken him to task for allowing smoking, "and who held that life to be properly led should be destitute of all enjoyment." He did not believe that "the thesis that life can be reduced to a Blue-book and a biscuit, was one that would stand the tests of time and practical experience." That description of life will stick, and, we hope, compel the philanthropists to con- sider what their ideal really is. Do they want England to be a monastery or a phalanstere, or a country with infinite varieties of life in it, most of them innocent and beneficial ? We quite understand that every creed must involve restric- tions; but how many do they want, and how many of those, again, do they wish to enforce from outside ? For the moment they wish to reply "All !"—and. it is a good thing there are such people as Peers to tell them their danger without risk of expulsion by faddists at the next Election.
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