Lord Salisbury replied at Edinburgh on Tuesday to Lora Rose
bery's speech of Saturday at Bradford. Lord Salisbury agrees with Mr. John Redmond that the House of Lords question is a very big red-herring drawn across the scent of Irish Home-rule, and when a politician who desires to resist a given policy agrees with a politician who passionately desires to promote it, as to the true drift of any sudden political interruption of this kind, we may feel pretty sure that there is a good deal of truth in their common interpretation of its. meaning. Lord Salisbury remarked that Caligula was credited with the benevolent wish that all Romans had but one neck,. in order that he might sever it at a single blow. In a meta- phorical sense Lord Salisbury attributed the same kind of wish to Lord Rosebery—namely, that all the great Conserva- tive interests of the country had but one neck, which he could sever by abolishing the House of Lords. The extraordinary dwindling of the Gladstonian minority in the House of Lords from 51 to 30, between 1880 and 1894, in spite of the 44 Gladstonian Peers created daring the same period to- replenish that minority, was due solely to the dismay with -which quiet people viewed the succession of blows delivered by recent Gladstonian Governments against all sorts of sober institutions and thriving interests in this country. Under Lord Aberdeen and Lord Palmerston, the House of Lords often supported the Liberal Government against the attacks of the Tory Opposition.
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