In a letter sent to Tuesday's papers the Duke of
Argyll answers a correspondent who had asked him what hope there was of a reconstructed Liberal party in language which is trenchant even for him. There is no Liberal party, he says, as "all the best men of the Liberal party with whom I served for thirty years revolted from Mr. Gladstone's new Irish policy of disintegration. Nothing but the debris was left him. I knew them all personally and can estimate their value pretty well. Lord Hartington, Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Goschen, John Bright, Sir Henry James, Lord Selborne." These were the very brains and backbone of the Liberal party, and "those who with a sort of canine fidelity stuck to a personal leader whatever he might do were all comparatively inferior men." The Liberal party, the Duke of Argyll continues, is better re- presented on the present Treasury Benches than it ever has been before. "Those who are now splitting up into still smaller frag- ments are not the Liberal party." There is, of course, a good deal of truth in all this, but we very greatly regret that the Duke of Argyll should have allowed his pen so much license. It is not for Unionists to copy the manner of Sir William Har- court. The point as to the right of the Opposition to the name of the Liberal party is, however, an interesting one. Intellectually, no doubt, it is not deserved, but it is more civil to yield it to them, and civility is by no means an unnecessary virtue in politics. Besides, what else are they to be called ? We cannot call them Gladstoniane, for Mr. Gladstone is dead; nor Home-rulers, for they have abandoned Home-rule ; nor Radicals, because many of them repudiate that word. The only civil and reasonable plan is, then, to call them what they call themselves,—i.e., Liberals. At any rate, the word is a reminder of what they ought to be.
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