In the part of his Brighton speech referring to domestic
affairs, Lord Salisbury, remarking that ten years ago Brighton was a Radical borough, like many other parts of the country which are now Conservative through and through, endeavoured to account for the great change. He ascribed it not to any fixed preference for the Tory statesmen, for he believed in the law of the pendulum so far as it implies a disposition to give each great party its innings, so long as it does not so use its innings as to endeavour to turn everything topsy-turvy, but he suggested that when Mr. Gladstone proposed first to repeal (or virtually repeal) the Union, and then to disestablish two Churches, and then to silence the House of Lords because they would not be- come parties to these great enterprises, the country grew restive, and took care that the pendulum should swing so little to one side, and so very much to the other, that the alternations amounted practically to putting a stopper on all this revolu- tionary energy, at least so soon as Mr. Gladstone's personal influence was withdrawn. If men of the temper of Lord
John Russell or Lord Palmerston had remained at the head of the Liberal party, they would certainly have had their full share of power, but the country was not inclined to level all its great historical institutions because some of them had obvious and serious defects. No good forester would cut down the finest trees in his forest because their stems were not altogether straight, nor their branches all symmetrically placed.
