22 APRIL 1882, Page 1

No other speech of any importance was made till the

evening,: after Lord Salisbury's and Sir Stafford Northcote's departure, when Lord Sandon delivered a regular oration on the old Jingo. lines,—on the iniquity of letting Russia get so near to Indiae—of allowing France to establish herself in Tunis, an arrangement, by the way, of Lord Salisbury's,—and on the humiliation of failing in the- attempt to obtain a new commercial treaty from the French Republic. He inveighed against the party which sup- ported Mr. Bradlaugh's right to sit in Parliament, and which had proposed the closure of debate by a majority, and he asserted. that the "progress " of the Liberals could be compared only_to " The Rake's Progress," in "The Road to Ruin." That was not a very fortunate comparison. Hogarth's rake is a profligate

who runs in debt without any power to pay, quarrels with ignoble companions, and spends his life in riotous living. Can that be charged with more of justice on the present Govern- ment, or on the last ?