Mr. Balfour, in his third, or Wednesday's, speech at Man-
chester, declared that the action of the Government in passing such a revolutionary Bill as the Home-rule Bill through the House of Commons, by the use of the guillotine, had done more to justify the existence of the House of Lords than any one could possibly have done for generations back. To pass such legislation as that,' against the wish of the great majority of the people of England, against a majority even of the people of Great Britain, and to pass it undis- cussed would have been one of the most monstrous in-
fringements of constitutional liberty. By rejecting that• Bill, and making it necessary to go through the whole process again, the House of Lords had made itself the guardian of English liberties, and had demonstrated the necessity of a Second Chamber to stand forth between more or less accidental majorities, and the abrupt reversal of a. great policy still dear to the people of this island, without even allowing fair debate on some of the most important of the proposals thus flung down before the country. Mr. Bal- four regards the action of the Lords as certain to be endorse& by the country, while Sir William Harcourt endeavours to believe,—probably without complete success,—that it will be vehemently repudiated by it.
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