NEWS OF THE WEEK.
THE chief political event of the week is the failure to reach a compromise on the Education Bill, the House of Lords on Wednesday, on the motion of Lord Lansdowne, insisting on its amendments. We have dealt at length else- where with the whole situation, and will only say here that it appears to be universally admitted that the rejection of the Bill was due to Mr. Balfour. There does not seem to have been any very strong objection to a compromise on the part of the Peers themselves ; but just as they were willing to be guided by Mr. Balfour's advice to accept the Trade Disputes Bill, so they proved willing to take his advice to reject the Education Bill, or, to be. more exact, to refuse to be satisfied with the very considerable amendments and concessions which the Government were prepared to make on their original measure. We desire to be absolutely fair to Mr. Balfour, who, We regret to record, is at the moment laid up with a severe attack of influenza; but we do not think that we are doing him an injustice when we say that the advice which he tendered to the Peers, and which they unhappily accepted, was given as Leader of the Opposition, and with a view to embarrass the Government and place them in a difficulty,
• rather than as the friend of the Church of England or of religious education in its widest and best sense, or, again, as a Conservative statesman anxious that the House of Lords should retain its position in the Constitution, and deserve the confidence of the country as a whole. In ordinary times and in ordinary circumstances the principle that it is the business of the Leader of the Opposition to support nothing, to oppose everything, and to embarrass and turn out the Government may work well enough. There are moments, however, when higher considerations should prevail, and in our opinion this was one of them.
