Mr. Chamberlain, too, made an interesting speech this day week
on occasion of the first anniversary of the foundation of the Birmingham Liberal Union Club,—of which he was unanimously re-elected President. Mr. Chamberlain spoke. with indignation of the intended Gladstonian opposition to Mr. Jesse Collings in the Bordesley Division, saying that there is no man who has done so much for the cause of labour as Mr. Jesse Collings. On the subject of the split in the Parnollite Party, he held that it had shelved the practical chances of Irish Home-rule for an indefinite period, since it had secured the opposition of a considerable section of the popular Irish Party to any Gladstonian Bill, in addition to the opposition of all true Conservatives and Liberal Unionists. With such enemies in Ireland, he held that more than half the people of Ireland were ready to multiply the obstacles in Mr. Gladstone's way,-- which seems to us rather a sanguine calculation. But even with a very large minority of the Irish people disaffected to Mr. Gladstone's plans, the much greater minority of the people' of Great Britain opposed to those plans would find it easy enough to arrest Mr. Gladstone's progress, even after he had. carried a General Election.
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