Lord Rosebery addressed a large meeting in the Guild- hall
at Plymouth on Friday week. The various questions before the country at the present moment, he observed, resolved themselves mainly into this : " Can you have confi- dence in his Majesty's Government ? " Mr. Chamberlain's mission to Sauth Africa was a matter outside and beyond party ; and the new Admiralty Memorandum was a brave and honest effort -to put the Service on a right footing. But the fountains of his sympathy with the Government dried up at that point. Mord Rosebery then proceeded to give several examples of Ministerial inefficiency. First of all there was the " large m id costly mission to the Shah in order to do now what they might have done when he was in this country in August," which Lord Rosebery grandiloquently described as "one of flume unexplained transactions of the Government which, from the point of view of the taxpayer, throw a lurid light on its. administration and explain to some extent the enormous expenditure under which we are groaning at the present moment." Lord Rosebery then referred, in terms of elaborate irony, to the cancelling of the order sanctioning Sir Hugh McC almont's candidature at Newmarket ; and thence, after disclaiming any intention of blaming Mr. Brodrick, re- turned to the charge about Lord Kitchener's "exile." We had our Hercules ready to hand to clean out the Augean stables in Pall Mall, "but if you send your Hercules to the Himalayas he cannot be of much use in Pall Mall." His proposal had been met by a "universal chorus of all the old women," but he contendle d that it still held the field. Even if precedent was against fit, " when you have a great reform to carry out, and when you have a great man at hand to do it, for God's sake drop pmcedent for a moment and come to business."
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