Lord Rosebery's speech at the City Liberal Club on Friday,
May 5th, was an oratorical apple of discord if ever there was one,—not by any means, however, a specimen of "that crude apple which diverted Eve," but a far more subtle and dan- gerous fruit. After a curiously exaggerated comparison of the late Mr. Tom Ellis to Charles Buller—Charles Buller did a great public service in writing the Canada Report (called by courtesy Lord Durham's Report), whereas Mr. Ellis, though very possibly he might have done so, never, in fact, did ser- vice except to his party—Lord Rosebery went on to deplore the decay of Parliamentary Liberalism, which had robbed politics of all its interest. Yet in the country he did not believe that " the swell of Liberalism " had ever been so strong. But when he said Liberalism he did not mean sec- tional Liberalism, but Liberalism as it existed before the split in 1886, the Liberalism which hated extremes either of Toryism or Socialism. " Till you have the Liberal party as it was before 1886, reconstituted in some form or another, or until you have a new party which will embody all the elements which existed before 1886, you will never achieve that pre- dominance in the country which existed when I began public life, the heritage, and almost the birthright, of the party."
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