The long-expected political meteor has at last flashed its illumination
on Manchester, and vanished. Yesterday week Lord Salisbury made two considerable speeches in that city, which, however, contained no new announcement affecting the political situation of the country. In the morning he answered a memo- rial from the Chamber of Commerce, and lamented the mistake of former Governments in repealing so large a number of duties on foreign goods without exacting any compensation in the shape of an equivalent reduction of the foreign duties on British goods,—an unequivocal announcement of reciprocity principles, which was received with some amazement, and cries of" No, no !" Di the evening, at a Conservative banquet in the Free-trade Hall, attended by 700 Conservatives, Lord Salis- bury made his great speech proclaiming the gospel of Austrian intervention in Turkey as "good tidings of great joy" for the world, and representing Austria as a final guarantee for the stability of the East of Europe,—a speech on which, so far as it contained his defence of the foreign policy of the Government, we have said enough elsewhere. We may here add that he described the Liberal programme as to the Land-laws as only a suggestion which would render it necessary for the farmer to pay his rent to two squireens, instead of to one squire ; that he harped a good deal on the probability of the Liberals proposing disestablishment in Scotland ; that he intimated the probability of the Liberal leaders giving way to the extremists, especially in regard to Home-rule ; and that he warned the country that if Lord Hartington came into power, it would be the signal for England's retiring "from the position which she occupies, and accepting the abdication of power to which she submitted in 1871 and 1873." Whether that be a threat or a bribe depends on how you look at "the position which England occupies." To our minds, she could hardly occupy one more humiliating than that resulting from grandiose engagements which she pusillanimously shirks, and from announcing it as "good tidings of great joy" that Austria can discharge for her, at least a little bit of the work which she has thus conspicu- ously failed to grapple with for herself.
