Sir Wilfrid Lawson, speaking to the East Cumberland Liberal Association
on Tuesday, made rather a happy mot. He thought that the speakers who were so perpetually repeating that Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury had obtained peace with honour were making a slight mistake, leaving out a letter. They had received garters, and in fact "what they had got was not peace • with honour, but peace with honours." This laughing sentenee will probably put an end to the parrot-cry, which would survive the clearest demonstration that no peace had been obtained, and no honour either,—nothing but Cyprus, and a right to be angry if the Sultan rejects our advice in Asia Minor. It is a pity, with a population like ours, that humour is so completely absent from political speeches. A little ridicule of the operatic company which is managing "the Imperial," and trying to substitute carpenters' scenes, gorgeous Oriental dresses, and sensational incidents for the historic drama, while raising prices for all but box seats, would be more effective than much better argument. So utter is the dearth, however, of anything approaching to jocularity, that Mr. Newdegate, of all men alive, has been tempted to believe that be could make a joke, and on Wednesday succeeded in making the absolutely worst ever recorded. He was pro- testing sensibly enough against shifting the centre of the Empire to India, as the Premier is trying to do, and then spoiled his argument by saying that "ever after Valens was sent to Constantinople, Rome became a valetudinarian empire." Ills audience laughed,—but they were Coventry folk, and depression is chronic at Coventry.
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