On the following day, Mr. Balfour, in replying to a
toast to the Liberal Unionists, passed the warmest panegyric on the fidelity of the Liberal Unionists to the Conservative alliance, and predicted that, from being temporary and partial, it would become permanent and organic. He said that it was im- possible to name an alliance which had been more effectual in its results, or one more disinterested on the part of one of the allies than this had been on the side of the Liberal Unionists, who had gained nothing by it, and had yet held to it with the utmost fidelity and cordiality. The Tories, he declared, had been really willing to liberalise their policy in order to satisfy the Liberal Unionists. At the same time, he maintained that they had been in the truest sense Conservative in the course they had adopted. We agree entirely with Mr. Balfour in holding that, up to the present time, the policy of the united party has been as genuinely Conservative as it has been genuinely Liberal. But is that true of the Irish measure promised for next Session P So far as we can judge, a measure less likely to be in the best sense Conservative, we can hardly imagine. It is a measure intended to dish the Gladstonians. We shall be surprised if it does not rather betray the Conservatives into their hands.
