On Wednesday the Conservatives wore naturally out of temper. The
Duke of Northumberland, in opening the Northern Conser- vative Club at Newcastle-on-Tyne, is reported by the Times as having said that the only difference between the House of Lords and the House of Commons was that the former "had not to go to the Constituencies to flatter them, and to toll that what was not true, to misrepresent the actions of opponents, to accuse honourable men of falsehood and fraud, as had been the in- variable practice, he might almost say, in every speech which had been uttered by the Prime Minister when out of office." The Duke of Northumberland has clearly no great sense of the sin of slander. He did not give one instance of Mr. Gladstone accusing his opponents of falsehood and fraud, and we doubt if there has been a public man of any party during the last half- century to whom it would be so difficult to bring home a single charge of this kind, or one in any way approach- ing to it without admitting the most careful production by Mr. Gladstone of the evidence on which any charge of misstatement was founded. If the flattery of constitu- encies involves " the misrepresentation of the action of opponents," the Duke of Northumberland must not only have been singularly successful in attaining the art when lie repre- sented Beoralston and North Northumberland, but must have taken some pains not to lose it by disuse.
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