Sir Wilfrid Lawson, speaking on Monday _at a meeting of
the East Cumberland Liberal Registration Association, said he was not so anxious for a dissolution as some of his friends, for be was persuaded that a generation having grown up that knows not genuine Toryism, owing to the long tenure of office by Liberal Governments, it is absolutely essential that it should learn by severe personal experience what Toryism really means before the Tory regime comes to an end. He would like the lesson thoroughly learnt, while we are about it, rather than only half-learnt, and the sooner forgotten. That is a very wise aspiration of Sir 'Wilfrid's, if his analogy be entirely just. But he would hardly recommend an intemperate man to master thoroughly the lesson of what intemperance really involves, before throwing it off; for there would be danger that by the time he was thoroughly enough disgusted with his own intem- perance, he would be too weak to abjure it ; and may not the same be true of political intemperance ? May we not get so fatally accustomed to bad political burlesques, that we can no longer relish the legitimate drama ?
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