It is a pity that Lord Derby does not write
leading articles. What admirable leaders portions of his speeches would make ! Take, for instance, the short speech de- livered at Liverpool on Thursday, a perfect model of crispness, cogency, and impartiality of thought. He quite admitted that the Federal solution of the Home-ride ques- tion is arguable. But "it would utterly upset the two most real and important of our institutions,—the House of Commons and the Cabinet. It would put an end to the House of Commons, for what you would have would be, first, an Imperial Council dealing with Foreign, Colonial, and Indian affairs, with defence, and with Imperial finance Next, a merely local English Assembly like the State Legislatures in America, all-powerful as regards local legislation, but unable to touch any Imperial question. Neither of these bodies, both so limited in their functions, could possibly possess the influence or the power of Parliament as we now have it. Authority so divided would be frittered away. There would be no one central body to which everybody could look as the guide and test of opinion. Exactly the same thing would hold good of the Cabinet. At present the same dozen men are held responsible for the entire conduct of public affairs ; but a system under which the Secretary for Foreign Affairs and the Secretary for War should be responsible to one body, the Home Secretary to another body, each absolutely independent of the other, and in which the two sets of authority, Imperial and local, would not even sit together as colleagues, would utterly destroy that unity of administration which we believe to be necessary for administrative efficiency." Could that have been put more neatly by any political writer in the Kingdom P
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