"LEGISLATION BY PICNIC." .
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."1 Sin,—Lord Salisbury has received fall credit for the coinage of a somewhat happy phrase—a valuable political weapon in the present day ; but is it not one which may be turned against its author with deadly force ? In the first place, with what ill grace does such a taunt emanate from the representative of an order whose whole lives are a picnic—when not worse—as com- pared with the lot to which those are born at whom it is levelled ! If the essence of the taunt is a charge of regarding legislation as an amusement rather than a business—and it must mean this if it has any meaning at all—it is a taunt which our hereditary legislators had better take home to themselves. In the second place, there is a happy precedent of picnic legislation in our English annals, for a scene enacted in a meadow (as tradition asserts) must surely answer to the title. It is an auspicious omen at the present crisis. I allude to what took place in the field of Runnymede in 1215.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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