26 OCTOBER 1991, Page 12

One hundred years ago

MR. BALFOUR has been making a few not very important speeches at Manchester, on Education and the de- fensive organisation of the Kingdom, but has said nothing of any consequence which it is at all necessary to record. He reserves, as usual, his chief political speech to his constituents till it is too late for the weekly papers to read or comment on it. We wonder why Friday and Saturday seem to be the days most favoured by political orators of the first rank. Perhaps they hold that it is well to give the weekly journalists full time to consider and revise and amend what the much-hurried journalists of the daily Press say in haste and repent at leisure.

The Spectator, 24 October 1891