8 OCTOBER 1881, Page 1

NEWS OF THE WEEK.

SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE is stumping the North. He delivered along speech at Hull on gonday, and another at Beverley on Tuesday, and will speak again in Newcastle next week, after Mr. Gladstone has spoken. That will relieve his mind from an oppression, while he will be encouraged by the presence of Lord Salisbury, and the favour of Mr. Cowen, the Radical who is so Radical that he generally votes Tory. Under those circumstances, he will probably deliver himself with a little more emphasis and clearness than he has yet been able to do. It is possible to gather from his utterance what he wishes, as we have shown elsewhere; but two speeches more densely dull, more aggravatingly tedious and trifling, were never offered to the public. There is no cue in them for the party, no guidance for its representatives, no programme for its Whips, and nothing for the indifferent to read with pleasure. If " happy the country whose annals are dull" is a true saying, England with Sir Stafford Northcote for annalist must be Paradise. As Sir Stafford Northcote is not a dull man, and has risen to be leader of his party in the Lower House, the only conclusion is that he has found the Government so good that he has nothing worth hearing to say against it. That is probably what he really thinks ; but then, as his conduct in the Afghan War showed, what he thinks is never an effective check on what he thinks it expedient to say. If there is much of this kind of talk, however, literary Liberals will regret even Lord Beacons- field. He would have ruined the Empire, but he was readable.