Lord Hartington made a good speech in proposing " The•
United Kingdom" as a toast at the City Liberal Club on Wednesday. He proposed it, he said, in the old sense. He- gave the Gladstonians full credit for believing that their plan of loosening the ties between the two islands would really render the Union more effective ; but he could not himself see how it would be possible for a Liberal Government to be in power in connection with all Imperial affairs, while a Con- servative Government was administering the will and the- resources of those six-sevenths of the people of the United Kingdom, with much more than six-sevenths of their resources,.
who happened to have returned a Conservative majority for Great Britain. Mr. Butt, who had a Home-rule scheme of his own for Ireland, admitted frankly that federation between England and Ireland was quite impossible and unworkable.
" We must not come forward," Mr. Butt had said, "with a proposal to pull all existing things to pieces in order to•
construct fantastic baby-houses, or to frame political toys.' Yet what Mr. Butt had so contemptuously refused to do, is now, according to the latest scheme of Home-rule, to be done. " Statesmen have been found," said Lord Hartington, "who are perfectly willing to pull our existing Constitution to pieces, without even taking the trouble to propose fantastic baby-houses or political toys in its place." That is a scornful description of the situation, and yet, had Mr. Butt been living, would he not have been even more dismayed than Lord Hartington at what has actually been• advocated by the statesman on whom, some eighteen years ago, Mr. Butt endeavoured in vain to urge his comparatively moderate political suggestions P
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