Sir Charles Dilke delivered a speech at Newcastle on Mon-
day against Monarchy, very violent in words and very incon- clusive in argument. His grand objection to the Throne is that it costs money. He believes £100,000 a year is spent on Royal yachts and yachting, and £131,000 on the Royal Household, and £172,000 a year used to be spent on tradesmen's bills and is now saved by the Queen, " a diversion of public moneys almost amounting to malversation," surely an outrageous remark to make about an economy which, regrettable or otherwise, is as absolutely legal as a saving effected by any other official out of his own salary. Sir C. Dilke says the Monarchy costs £1,000,000 a year. If it is worth having at all, the sum is not too much ; but as a matter of fact, the Monarchy, apart from that matter of the yachts, of which we know nothing, does not cost £300,000 a year. We cannot believe that the Republican cause is advanced by clap-trap of this kind—it was received with applause—though, it might be by the latter part of Sir Charles's speech, in which he tried to show from a speech of Mr. Disraeli's that the Queen interfered very much in foreign affairs, and did show that the Royal Family enjoy a most invidious and unjust preference in military promotion. A majority of people in this country are still " loyal" to monarchy and the monarch, but we never hoard of any one who felt loyal to the Queen's rilatives.
