On Saturday last, Lord Derby, speaking at a function at
University College, Liverpool, made one of his admirably lucid and thoughtful addresses. Alluding to the fact that Mr. Brunner had recently founded a professorship intended to promote :the study of economic science, Lord Derby pro- tested against the undue disparagement in popular judgment from which for the time political economy is suffering. The disparagement came chiefly from "two sets of persons, those who were mentally incapable of following its arguments, and those who, having followed them, disliked the conclusions to which they led." Hardly less neatly put were Lord Derby's remarks on the generous gifts made to the College by living men. "Assuredly he did not quarrel with those who had left, or who would leave, their money at death. It would be very welcome, but there was this difference, that when a man parted with his capital in his lifetime, they knew that he was really in earnest in the cause, since he was willing to make a sacrifice for it, whereas a legacy might prove only (he would not say it did prove) that he had quarrelled with his family, or that he wished to secure a cheap immortality at the expense of some one else." Such speaking as Lord Derby's is doubly welcome during the downpour of diffusive, non-committal, know-nothing eloquence to which the Newcastle gatherings have given rise during the past week. Since Sir Mountstuart Grant-Duff no longer makes speeches, Lord Derby is almost the only public man who seems to hold that thoughts as well as words are wanted on a public platform.
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