At the banquet given to Mr. Adam last Tuesday, at
Edin- burgh, Lord Rosebery, who was in the 'chair, made a very amusing speech. He commented on a prize offered by the Conservative party for an essay on " The Demoralising Effects of Liberalism," for which Lord Folkestone was to be one of the judges, and approved greatly the nomination, since Lord Folkestone, by his intimate knowledge of the career of his own grandfather, must have the best possible means of knowing how far demoralising extreme Liberalism must be. Indeed, Lord Rosebery suggested that if Mr. Adam would but com- pete for the prize, he was sure to get it, since, if Liberalism were demoralising at all, " Mr. Adam must be the old gentleman' himself." Mr. Adam had taken upon himself the organisation of a party which, according to the Tories, was so disorganised that his office was less " that of a whip than of a pig-driver,"—and yet he had led them to victory ; and of course, he, if any one, must know what Liberalism did for man, whether it moralised him or demoralised him, and iu what degree. No doubt ; and no one knows better than Mr. Adam what organising the Liberals really means. It consists chiefly in keeping your head against the per- verse dogmatism of the London Clubs, and in not driving unwilling Liberals at all, but iu letting the unwilling Liberals see how unnecessary they arc to the party, and how likely to be dis- pensed with by it. That was Mr. Adam's secret of wisdom, and a simple secret it is, but not so easy to live up to as to explain.
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