On Tuesday, Sir William Harcourt addressed the Eighty Club in
a speech of immense gratulation and triumph, and one intended expressly to cement still more closely the alliance between the Parnellites and the Gladstonians. As for his own right-about-face, Sir William made light of it. He confessed that he and his friends had changed their policy ; that was the long and short of it. They thought that was white now which they thought black three years ago. He spoke of the Liberal Unionists as transplanted trees which look very sickly. But it is not the Unionists who are transplanted. It is Sir William Harcourt and his friends. We are where we were. They are transplanted to a new soil, and if they thrive upon it, as Sir William Harcourt himself seems to do, why, it is no great wonder. Mature trees are always hard to transplant. Weeds flourish all the better for transplanting, and Sir William Harcourt's political faith is decidedly weedy.
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