Lord Rosebery delivered a formal reply to Mr. Chamber- lain's
Birmingham speech at Sutton on Thursday, in a meeting held to promote the candidature of Mr. Bmssey for the Epsom Division of Surrey. (We suppose that he has no chance of success.) He spoke of the great irritability of Mr. Chamber- lain's speech. There were some portions of that speech that were undoubtedly indignant, but we should never have ima- gined that it was a quarter as tart as Lord Rosebery's rejoinder, though of course those who agree with one speaker and not with the other, are hardly the best judges of the temper displayed. Lord Rosebery protests that silence should never be interpreted as implying a change of front. Perhaps not. But what is remarkable is the contrast between Lord Rose- bery's conspicuous moderation when he did touch the Home-rule Question in 1886, and during the next year or two, and the great heat with which he touches it now. He tells Mr. Chamberlain that all the Liberal measures of the present Government are Tory measures bottled in Liberal bottles, and tries to prove his ease by the Free Education Act, on the ground that it did not in- stitute local control of the new free schools, and the Small Hold- ings Bill, on the ground that it did not adopt the principle of compulsion. But bow is a popular measure made Tory by re- fusing to go quite as far as the Radicals wish ? Does Lord Rose- bevy think that three-quarters of a loaf is the logical contrary of the whole loaf, instead of a close approach to it? Lord Rose- bery himself does not think these measures Tory measures, for he goes on to explain them (very justly) by the change which household suffrage in the counties has made in the temper of the Tory Party.
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