Mr. Gladstone's speech at Blackheath on Wednesday was an , extraordinary
feat for a statesman of sixty-five who had quite recently been confined to his bed with bronchitis. The day was• damp and drizzly ; numbers, which are variously estimated at from six to seven thousand, had to be as far as possible brought within the range of his voice ; and his only platform was a -cart with some sort of awning, in the front of which he had to stand bareheaded. He made, however, a very successful and, as we have shown elsewhere, if anything, a too popular speech, full of skilful retorts on Mr. Disraeli's address to his Buckinghamshire constituents. Mr. Gladstone was very tender to the Licensed Victuallers. Whatever they had suffered, it would be the effort of the Government rather "to close than -widen any breaches" of feeling or interests which might now exist. He insisted, too, very strongly on the injustice he should deem it to repeal the income-tax without giving an equal relief to those classes who do not pay income-tax, in relation to some article of uni- versal consumption. He rallied Mr. Disraeli for his general view.that a surplus grows like a mushroom out of the ground, without any man's planting it, and he insisted that the only Conservative re- action there le means " weariness," " lassitude," "loss of energy," not changed convictions. Thespeech made only the greater impres- sion for what, as a Prime Minister's speech, were its chief defects.
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