The Chancellor of the Exchequer was entertained by the Liberal
Union Club on Tuesday, and made a remarkable speech. Of the part which concerned the future, and the alternative results which may be anticipated after the General Election, we have said enough elsewhere. To the services of the Liberal Unionists to the cause of Union, he said that no one had rendered such a tribute as Mr. Gladstone, who always reserves a denunciation of the Liberal Unionists for his peroration. In Mr. Gla.dstone's eyes, the crimes of the Government are peccadilloes Which he charitably attributes to invincible ignorance, but the crimes of the Liberal Unionists are sins against the light. Mr. Goschen regarded the present lull in the campaign as indicating that the Glad- stonians are looking round them before commencing a new attack, and he hoped that they would seize the opportunity to substitute an exposition of their new policy and a serious argument in its favour, for the barren invective which had now gone on for three years. Mr. Gladstone might greatly benefit himself by explaining frankly what in his own judgment, after consultation with Mr. Parnell, the Irish policy of the future should be. Mr. Goschen did not think that Mr. Glad- stone would use the next three years wisely if he did not announce the changes which his Irish policy has undergone since 1886, and present fully his reasons for those changes. The Government have frankly announced their policy,—a policy of firm government of Ireland, a policy of material development of the resources of Ireland, and a policy of very cautious advance in the building-up of local freedom. Of Irish local government he said :—" We must, in justice to our fellow-subjects in Ireland, approach this task with considerable care, and without any declared resolution that we must follow a particular pattern such as has been adopted in either England or Scotland."
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