Lord Salisbury made a brilliant speech at Merchant Taylors' Hall
yesterday week, in which, however, lie struck one very false note when he referred, without any indication that he thought it a fatal extreme in the opposite direction to that which he was condemning, to the days " when Bills necessary
for maintaining law in Ireland were introduced in the morning and became law at night." He did not, indeed, praise the state of opinion which rendered this possible ; he only contrasted it with the present condition of things, when it seems likely that a mild Bill for amending criminal procedure, far less drastic than Mr. Gladstone's in 1882, may cost Parliament a whole Session, and mend° all remedial legis- lation of a more positive kind. But Lord Salisbury would have done better not to refer at all to the high-handed system of old times without repudiating the notion that he had any wish to return to it. For the rest, he gave Mr. W. H. Smith no more than his due in the animated panegyric on his equanimity and firmness ; and his picture of the impression which Eastern states- men would form of the House of Commons, when they heard of it as the most powerful body in England and yet saw it quite para- lysed by the obstructive tactics of a minority, was very happy. They would think, he said, that the House of Commons must be performing "some mysterious penance for some °bemire offence, for having neglected to marry its daughter, or to bury its grand- father," and had been sentenced to undergo this expiation for the offence. If things went on as they do now, some substitute for animated beings would probably be found in the procedure of the House of Commons. " We shall provide a steam Irish Party, an electric Ministry, and a clockwork Speaker." But we
had come to the meeting of the ways, and from this time we should see either the renewed life, and vitality or the rapid decay of the British Constitution. Lord Salisbury pro- phesied an epoch of regeneration, and certainly if political degeneracy is beginning, it was never before combined with so many indications of social renovation.
