Mr. Chamberlain commented with great force on the cowardliness of
scuttling out of Egypt, and letting all we had done there run to waste, just because Mr. Gladstone could not resist French pressure ; and he was very amusing in his criticism of the Newcastle programme, which he called a stratum of political " conglomerate," or, as it is popularly called, "pudding-stone," formed out of a mass of fragments by the pressure of great natural forces,—in this case that of the wirepullers. The General Election, he said, would determine whether the Government should be en- couraged to persevere in its present policy, or " whether the country is once more to be plunged into confusion, our foreign affairs to be disorganised and embarrassed, our posses- sions to be diminished or frittered away, and our home affairs to be inextricably entangled in the hopeless effort to satisfy Irish agitators, and to conciliate the enemies of England at home and abroad."
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