Lord Hartington's speech at Rawtenstall on Saturday; apart from its
controversial side—and we may say at once that we have no space for the rejoinders of the statesmen to each other —shed much light on his personal attitude. He is not going, he says, to join the Conservative Party, though he has many Conservative sympathies, because he has no confidence in the Conservative leaders. Their foreign policy was rash, their conduct in Opposition unwarrantable, and their alliance with Mr. Parnell discreditable. He can trust his colleagues, who he knows wish thngood of the- people, and he will not "rule out any of their proposals from discussion." One such proposal is that local authorities shall have power to buy land and distribute it- "compulsorily;" and he does not rule that out: it is nonsense to call it confiscation, for though, he would prefer- to grant the right to purchase in open- market, there are plenty of precedents for the other course. All that means that Lord Hartington does not want to quarrel with Mr. Chamberlain, except as one colleague quarrels with another, and that he will see first whether the Liberal Cabinet cannot manage to hold all parties.
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