AN UNFORESEEN RESULT OF LIBERAL UNIONISM. [Ts Tex EDITOR Or
Tax "SPECTATOR."
Sra,—The late Session has taught the world much at the expense of Great Britain and Ireland, and nothing more emphatically than that even a portion of the Anglo-Saxon race will go astray and widely err, if left untended and nnshepherded. Unionists of all shades rejoiced when Lord Hartington, Mr. Bright, and Mr. Chamberlain, with a following intellectually and politically powerful, withdrew from the Liberal Party on the old leader turning his back on the old traditions ; but not a man foresaw—what the Session has proved—that this secession woald mean the withdrawal of all party control, direction, and influence. The Liberal Unionists eliminated, the
party was left headless, or with a head wagged by the tail; so, at least, it seemed.
Mr. Gladstone technically led during last Session, but only in the sense of speaking first and of moving hostile resolutions ; he never controlled, moderated, restrained, or directed. Sir W. Harcourt, as an able critic remarked, " inflamed everything and settled nothing ;" while Mr. John Morley tried very hard to prove how little comes of putting a statesman's head on a literary man's shoulders. Mr. Gladstone's hand either has lost its canning, or he must have deluded himself with the idea that the disgraceful scenes in the House—which he failed to condemn, —and the vagaries of English Radicals—which he has not attempted to restrain—may in some mysterious manner advance the cause of Home.rule. Up to the fall of his Government last year, he led in all senses of the word ; as a Leader of Opposition, he has led in no sense saving in that of speaking first.
Even the print which was once the organ of the Liberal Party has caught a spirit totally foreign to old Liberalism, as your Mitchelstown article of September 17th plainly shows, and sinks to a lower depth than respectable journalism has ever before reached, in speaking of the Government as being " two corpses to the good."
Can it be possible that any politicians in the Kingdom believe that disgraceful scenes and language in the House, together with Labouchereism, Conybeareism, and Brunnerism out-of- doors, are the one thing needful to advance Home.rule P Or are we to believe that Liberal Unionism, by withdrawing Lord Hartington, Mr. Bright, and Mr. Chamberlain, has left non- Unionist Liberals leaderless, and absolutely without any one to moderate, advise, control, direct, and influence P—I am, Sir, 4re., R. ST. J. CORBET. Royal Thames Yacht Club, 7 Albemarle Street, W., Sept. 21st.
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