Mr. W. H. Smith made one of those bitter party
speeches at the London and Westminster Working Men's Conservative Association on Monday which, coming from so mild and busi- ness-like a man, produces the effect of a lion's roar in the mouth of a beaver. He was particularly fierce with the Government for not resigning on the Suez-Canal agreement,—an agreement which the Government negotiated at the request of the commercial men of all parties, and announced their intention from the first only to propose subject to the approval of commercial men of all parties, and of Parliament. Lord Beaconsfield's Government never said this of their Water Bill ; yet did Lord Beaconsfield ever think of resigning because the Water Bill introduced by Sir Richard (then Mr.) Cross was contemptuously repudiated by the country in general ? Mr. Smith must know perfectly well that the Tory Government never dreamt of resigning on that ground, though the contemptuous rejection of that measure by the country probably hastened the dissolution which Lord Beaconsfield saw other reasons for advising. Yet no reference was made to the withdrawn Water Bill in Lord Beaconsfield's appeal to the country.
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