Lord Salisbury, as-the newly-chosen chief of the Conservative Party, delivered
an able-and well-considered speech at a meeting at the Cannon Street Hotel on Wednesday. The speech showed that our recent comments on his leadership and what he ought to stand for will be justified. We are thoroughly with him when he declares that the country needs a Conservative and Constitutional Government in order to restore national con- fidence. We only differ when he suggests that the Coalition Government is practically a Liberal Administration. Though we have no great love f or the Asquithian party we are often tempted to wish that a Liberal Administration were in power. Its home measures would probably be not more but less Social- istic, and as to its Irish policy it could not have gone further in the way of disintegration. Indeed, it would almost certainly havegone less far, for it would have been, confronted with a firm Opposition and would have been forced thereby to perform the primitive function of Government—i.e., the keeping of order. The Coalition Government with its bloated majorities, coupled to the slavish adoration with which the House of Commons supports its opportunist leader, is utterly reckless. Neither in Parliament nor in the Press is there any serious opposition or serious criticism of the Ministry. In other words, we have for the time lost both of the antiseptics of Politics.
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