Mr. Jackson, speaking at Leeds on the same day, assured
his audience that if they really wished for the class of mea- sures which would assist the poor to make their own way in the world, they would do much better to keep on the present Government, than to exchange it for a Government bent on grind schemes of constitutional revolution. The measures which had really helped the artisans and labourers, had pro- ceeded, he said, almost exclusively from Conservative Govern- ments. There we think Mr. Jackson was right ; but he forgot to say that Conservative Governments would seldom have originated and brought in such measures, had not these measures been preceded. by reforms which the party did not like and pertinaciously resisted, but which compelled them to consult popular opinion. There we see the use of the Liberal initiative; but it is quite true that the Liberal initiative is often wasted by the morbid ;zeal of Liberals for recasting their own weapons before they have so much as begun to use them. That is what the Glad- stonians are doing now. They are proposing td manufacture a new armoury of weapons before they have even begun to turn to account the tools which they turned out brand-new in 1885. The Conservatives often teach the Liberals the use of their own tools.
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