On Wednesday, Lord Salisbury made a second speech at a
lunch in the Cardiff Mill-Hall, given him by the Cardiff Con- servative Association. On this occasion he devoted himself chiefly to the subject of the division of classes, reprimanding the Gladstonian Party for endeavouring to increase and in- tensify, instead of endeavouring to mitigate and remove that division. He said that the House of Lords had not always been so united as it now is against the Liberal Party. Under Lord Aberdeen and Lord Palmerston it had supported the Liberal Government when the House of Commons deserted the Liberal Government. But Mr. Gladstone has raised so many cries with a tendency to set the masses against the classes, that he has almost compelled the vast majority of the House of Lords, and even the greater number of his own Peers, to side against him. Lord Salisbury in- stanced the attempt in the Employers' Liability Bill to break down even those voluntary arrangements entered into between employers and employed, which had succeeded per- fectly, and introduced the best feeling between the two classes; and, again, Mr. George Russell's attempt to recommend the Parish Councils Bill by running down squires and parsons, and praising up the agricultural labourers,—an attempt, however, of which Mr. Gladstone intimated his disapproval, as Lord Salisbury might hitve remembered. Again, Lord Salisbury instanced the Welsh Land Commission appointed by Mr. Gladstone to rake up all the grievances against Welsh landlords; and further, the attempt to disestablish and dis- endow the Church of Wales ; and also the Registration Bill, which Lord Salisbury thought would be for the benefit, first, of the vagrant classes of the community, and next of "that amiable section of the electorate who wish to represent people who may be absent, or may be dead." And he described it as the Conservative policy to insist on fair-play for the large populous centres like Cardiff, and not to allow masses of voters to be added to the constituencies in England without condition- ing that the representation of sparsely populated districts, like the Irish counties, should be deprived of their surplusage of power.
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