On Monday, Sir William Harcourt made a speech at Work-
ington, in West Cumberland, in which he referred to Sir Stafford Northcote's remark concerning " the madness of the people" at the last general election, and suggested that in asylums for the insane the milder and more harmless kind of lunatics fre- quently whisper to their visitors their profound regret that "Mr. So-and-So, and all the rest of them, should be out of their reason." While staying in West Cumberland, said Sir W. Harcourt, he had taken great pains to discover what the lunatics were thinking about, because, as they appeared to constitute the great majority of the people, it was just as well to know which way their minds turned, however radically unsound those minds might be. The Lowthers and the Bentincks hold that the Liberals are the enemies of prosperity, the foes of commerce, the abettors of revolution, and so hostile to their country, that they make the honour of England to bite the dust. Never- theless, during half a century—the Liberals having admin- istered the Government for nearly forty years out of fifty— English institutions have become more secure, our com- merce has advanced by rapid strides, pauperism and crime have-diminished, and the Colonies have become as loyal as they were formerly disaffected. If it were said that the old Liberals were all very well, but that the new Liberals are revolutionary, Sir W. Harcourt replied that the new Liberals, like the old, had laboured for peace, retrenchment, and reform, and had secured all three, in spite of the obstacles thrown in their way by the evil legacy of Tory rule.
Previous page
