This proposal was not exactly welcomed by the Government, and
they have since given notice that they will resist it; but in principle it was accepted as reasonable, and perhaps before long likely to be needful. They fell foul of Lord Salisbury, however, for asserting, as he certainly did, that enterprises like those for the , assassination of Pre- sident Carnot, "are, to a great extent, as far as we can judge, prepared and organised on this soil," of which there is, in the opinion of the Government, no evidence, and, especially in the ease of the recent assassination at Lyons, no probability. It was on this quite irrelevant assumption that the debate chiefly turned. Of course Lord Salisbury had intended only to indicate what sometimes has happened, and what at any time might happen again ; but led away by the strength which it gave to his argument, he assumed that the imputations made abroad, that the plot for President Carnot's death had been hatched here, was probably true,. whereas it is almost certainly false. We have indicated in. another column our opinion of the dangers more or less in. separable from Lord Salisbury's proposal, and the precautions which we should regard as essential to prevent abuses. So far as we can judge, Lord Rosebery and Lord Kimberley were not themselves at all averse to accepting the powers offered by Lord Salisbury, though the Cabinet has decided against them.
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