Mr. Childers, the Chancellor for the Duchy of Lancaster, made
an able speech to his constituents at Pontefract on Mon- day, which has been much assailed, and of the general drift of which we have spoken sufficiently elsewhere. With reference to the statement that England now requires before everything "rest," Mr. Childers made a very happy quotation from a Conservative speech on the state of India, made by Mr. Burke, the brother of the late Viceroy (the Earl of Mayo) :—" It has been said that India wants rest, that we have been introducing new laws at such a rate that the people are perplexed, distracted, and bewildered, and that the plethora of new laws tends to shake the stability of the Government. If rest means that the principle on which the Government has been carried on for the last fourteen years ought not to be reversed, I agree that the country ought to have rest.; but if rest means abstention from introducing reforms in the social condition of the people which the rapid change of circum- stances requires, I say rest means retrogression. Again, if rest means abstention from reform in the administration, I say rest means a continuance of admitted abuses." For ' India ' read the United Kingdom,' said Mr. Childers, and no words could be more applicable,—perhaps more applicable even than they are to India itself And Mr. Childers's speech was an able and striking comment on the text, showing how many alterations of law the wonderfully "rapid change of circumstances" during the last thirty years has forced upon us, and for how many more valuable changes of the kind there is room and a loud demand, changes which do not imply, and indeed directly tend to avert, anything like revolution.
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