Mr. Campbell-Bannerman addressed the Eighty Club yesterday week in a
speech which was intended to be animated and encouraging to the young fighting-men of the Gladstonian Party; but we doubt whether it served its purpose. The Secretary for War decried the Tories as a greatly degenerated party, and accused them of deliberate obstruction. But this is the sort of charge which is always brought against the party in Opposition by the party in power, and it takes a rather more impartial observer than Mr. Campbell-Bannerman to determine its justice or injustice. However, the speech was a very humble attempt to cheer the fainting spirits of the young warriors of the Gladstonian Party, and certainly did not justify the fierce attack made on it by Lord Randolph Churchill in his Saturday's speech at the Portman Square Rooms, Marylebone. He said that "of all the feeble and foolish controversialists he (Lord Randolph) had ever known during his public life, he pronounced Mr. Campbell-Banner- man to be easily the king." He had no arts of political conflict at his disposal. He had only "tricks." He had "got the idea that he had the gift of humour." "Such humour He did not even come up to the level of Scotch humour." And so forth. Surely this is all very superfluous and extravagant denunciation,—of which it is hard to understand the motive. Mr. Clampbell-Bannerman's speech was, so far as we can seer harmless enough as a party speech,—neither good nor especially bad, but the sort of speech one might expect under the circum- stances, certainly not one to single out for extravagant invective. Lord Randolph Churchill loses influence by these capricious descents on unimportant outposts of the enemy, which threaten nobody, and which might just as well be left unassailed.
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