The Oxford Druids are not so antiquated as to prefer
Fair- trade to Free-trade. At the anniversary dinner on Monday night, both the Earl of Jersey and Mr. A. W. Hall, M.P., pro- tested against the resolution of the delegates at the recent Conservative Conference at Oxford, in favour of Fair-trade,— we refer, of course, to the resolution passed by Mr. Howard Vincent and his friends. Lord Jersey was cautious in not absolutely adopting Free-trade as a principle. He limited himself to the assertion that for this country, and at this time, Free-trade is the right policy. Mr. Hall seems to have gone further. He treated Mr. Howard Vincent's resolution as a serious blot on the escutcheon of Conservatives, and did his best to wipe it off. This is as it should be. Mr. Howard Vincent is repenting, we hope, at leisure of the gross indis- cretion which he committed in haste, when he did his best to break up the alliance between the Conservative Unionists and the Liberal Unionists, an alliance on which the Union itself depends.
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