NEWS OF THE W EEK.
MR. CHAMBERLAIN has made two powerful speeches this week at Bradford, at the Conference of Liberal Unionists. We have said enough perhaps elsewhere about the speech of Wednesday, which was mainly a successful effort to explain the magnitude of the issues ; but the second speech was the more important. It was penetrated throughout by the feeling that, while the Unionists can do their work best as allies of the Conservatives, the alliance must become stronger and more permanent. " Our opponents are doing their best to sap the foundations of law and government, and order and common morality." It is necessary "to draw closer to the Conservative Party in defence of principles which hitherto Conservatives and liberals have held in common." The speaker warned the Government against any tendency to reaction, whether in local or Imperial concerns, but declared that "he was perfectly ready to accept responsibility for the general principles by which, at the present time, the country is governed." " I approve of the general policy of the Government ; I am in part responsible for it ; I am prepared to defend and support it." He urged Unionists, therefore, in every district to work heartily with Conservatives, declaring it to be his opinion—and he is an experienced election-manager—that in the North of England the numbers of Unionists are likely to increase, and not ahninish, at the next General Election. There will thus be gradually formed a party stronger than all others, a party of the nation, whose name, we would suggest, had better be the one already adopted in practice, Unionists.
