Mr. Leatham addressed his constituents at Huddersfield last week, in
words that certainly had an air of despondency and mortification about them, though they breathed the determina- tion not to be discouraged. He said he would rather see the Liberal party remain out of power for twelve years, than see that relaxation of political principle and haziness of political aim which would come from a mere craving for office for its own sake. The Liberal party did not exist, he said, with evident reference to Lord Hartington's recent speech at Bristol, in order that it might " take the bread out of the mouth of Conservative administrators by Conservative professions." It ought not to covet power only in order to exchange the pace of our present reform- ing policy " from a shuffle to an amble." Liberals were told " to emulate the pettifogging reforms, the tinkering and cobbling way of those who are always only too glad to keep an obsolete institution on its legs by giving it a new suit to stand up in." It would, however, be impossible for a Liberal to go before a great constituency and say, "I belong to the party of progress and reform, and I am all in favour of keep- ing things very much as they are." If that were all they could offer, the Liberals were mad to have taken such pains about re- casting the electoral machinery which they now refuse to use,—as mad as the mill-owner who built a mill, filled it with costly machinery, and then locked it up and threw the key into the river. That is very good, but, unfortunately for Mr. Leatham's metaphor, what be calls the new political machinery is really both machinery and mill-owner all in one, and now and then, perhaps, as Liberals would say, the mad mill-owner too. Radi- cals are too slow to believe that democracies are certainly more capricious, and very often less Liberal, than tolerably popular oligarchies.
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