Mr. Churchill's speech at Manchester on Monday contained less invective
and more argument than we are accustomed to expect from him. Except for the usual peroration against the House of Lords, it was a Free-trade speech with only an incidental allusion to the land question. Taking as his text the Manchester Ship Canal, he asked: "What kind of fools are those who come to us and say that when we have spent so inuch money in building a canal, and making foreign goods cheap in Manchester, we should spend more money on Custom House officers and Custom House buildings in order to make them dear again ? " Mr. Balfour had said that cotton was to be exempted from taxation. But "if cotton is to be exempted on the ground that it is a raw material of manufacture, why is not grain to be exempted on the ground that it is the raw material of human life ? " On Tuesday at Bolton Mr. Churchill returned to his more familiar manner. The House of Lords, he assured his audience, was the laughing-stock of every civilised country in the world. Mr. Churchill also stated that an analysis of the divisions in the Upper House showed that out of more than six hundred Peers only a hundred and ten on the average had voted in the divisions of forty years. "Was that the way they should carry out the duties they were born to ? " Mr. Churchill would have it both ways. He represents the Peers in one speech as absentees, and in another as industriously voting against every Liberal measure.
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