Mr. Goschen passed a sound and most justly deserved eulogy
on Lord Hartington, when he said on Wednesday at Margate that if you could take the backbones of Sir Stafford North- cote, Mr. Cross, Lord John Manners, and Colonel Stanley, and combine them all together, they would not be nearly so strong an the backbone of Lord Hartington alone. But though what he was expressing was very just, we demur rather to that very an- anatomical way of saying it. The lashing of four backbones into one as strong as all four, suggests a monstrous bony com- bination, rather than a backbone of extreme strength. The dry bones would certainly rattle, and the result would be assuredly noisy, and probably not very strong. Such bones as those of these four statesmen would not agree together, even though their owners have managed to agree together for a time, —how completely we do not know.
Previous page
