Lord Randolph Churchill made one of his rather violent speeches
at Boston, on Wednesday night, to a great Unionist meeting. Lord Randolph assailed Mr. Gladstone with all the wrath which be can concentrate in his perorations :— " Mr. Gladstone has lost all those qualities which he once possessed. He has nothing bat disguise and artifice. He is like a political gambler, staking his last throw, playing for high stakes, the votes of his country, and counting, like all gamblers, political as well as others, upon a lucky card turning up; and, like all other gamblers, his experience is that the card which will save him never comes. He will be finally defeated, finally, I think, excluded from political life, whenever the Dissolution may come ; and it cannot be more than twelve months distant. Like Richard of Gloucester on the field of Bosworth, or like Napoleon at the struggle of Waterloo, power will suddenly leave him, and contemporary history will condemn him for having thrown away his golden opportunity, for having falsified the confidence which the country had in him, and for having attempted to lead his -countrymen astray in the path of ruin and in the path of dis- honour; and contemporary and future historians will denounce him for a deliberate attempt, at the close or on approaching the evening of his life, to deliberately betray his native land." Lord Randolph's language is not discriminating. He cannot -condemn Mr. Gladstone's policy more earnestly than we do ; but to speak of him as leading his country astray in the "path of dishonour," is not judicious, for it suggests that he is dishonouring himself by a Home-rule policy he does not believe in, which is certainly not true. Mr. Gladstone is com- mitted to what we think will dishonour England. But he believes that it will crown England with eternal honour.
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