The debate on the proposed Colonial Conference in the Lords
on Tuesday was opened by Lord Balfour of Burleigh, who succeeded in eliciting an important statement from Lord Lansdowne which undoubtedly throws new light on the situation. Lord Lansdowne scouted the suggestion that explicit instructions should be given to the delegates. But he declared that it was necessary that the con- stituencies should give a mandate for the purpose, on the ground that "those who take part in the Conferencti will approach their task in a very different spirit and under very different conditions if they know that what they are doing is in accordance with the wish of the people of this country." Therefore, in answer to Lord Lytton's question what would happen if the Government were still in office in 1906, and the Conference met before the constituencies had given the mandate, he made it clear that the Conference would not be a Conference ad hoc to discess Fiscal changes, but an ordinary Conference, thus postponing to a future year the summoning of the crucial Conference, and, in a word, realising Lord Ridley's melancholy forecast of a "dissolving view of General Elections." This reassuring declaration, as Lord Goschen showed, knocks the bottom out of the plea of urgency in regard to recasting our whole Fiscal system, and frees us at least from the prospect of any attempts at Fiscal change for some years.
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