27 JULY 1895, Page 2

Mr. Balfour has made several important speeches during the week.

Speaking at Duns yesterday week in aid of his cousin's unsuccessful attempt to capture Berwickshire for the Unionist party, he remarked that Mr. Asquith and his colleagues "had ploughed the sands too long, and had got out of that uncongenial soil a most unexpected crop." He recognised cordially Mr. Asquith's own administrative work at the Home Office; but, as he said the same day, in another speech at Alnwick, Mr. Asquith had earned his reputation chiefly in administering Acts passed by the previous Unionist Government, and in doing well what the former Unionist Home Secretary had done equally well, and the next would do equally well also. " Let me say," he exclaimed, " that so far as I have any right to speak on behalf of the party of which I am a member, I would not stay in politics twenty-four hours longer if I believed that the party to which I belong reprei. rented merely a section bf the community." It was bee-Anse they believed it to represent the whole nation, and that they did their best to make it representative of the whole nation, and for that reason alone, that they justified their party existence.' At Alnwick, too, he d6clard Sebt-chnian; and as proud of his Scotch nationality as any ;Ashman could be of his Irish nationality, but 'also 'quite as -determined not to pish his Scotch nationality to the point of -breaking up the larger nation, as he is that the Irish nationality shall not proceed to that point. The Irish must be content with such nationality as the Scotch have and prize ; and as he would not give them more, so he would not have them desire less.