Sir Charles Dilke has made four speeches in Scotland this
week, but the speeches are hardly up to the mark of his old Chelsea addresses, and it seems to us that he feels more or less fettered by his position as a junior Member of the Cabinet. He did, however, give a very effective answer to Lord Salisbury's suggestion that the failure of the Commercial Treaty with France left us in a worse position as regards our commerce with France than we were in before, for he showed that we are un- doubtedly, on the whole, in a better position than that of the old Commercial Treaty,—which we never wished to renew, but only to amend. And he made a good point against the Conservative cry that in redistributing seats we must not go by the " mere numbers " of the population. Certainly, says Sir Charles Dilke' we will not redistribute seats so as to go by the "mere numbers" of the population; but then, at least, we must not go by the mere absence of numbers, and that is what the Conservative objection really means.
Previous page
