On Saturday last, the ninth anniversary of Lord Beacons- field's
death—by-the-way, April 19th, owing to the utter want of taste in ordinary Englishmen, or rather, of any instinctive appreciation of what is fitting, has really begun to be called "Primrose Day"—Mr. Balfour delivered a very powerful speech in Covent Garden Theatre to an immense audience of Primrose knights and dames, who, it appears, now number in all nearly a million. His chief point was the efficiency of the present Government. After praising Mr. Goschen's finance and Mr. Ritchie's administrative ability, he pointed out the magnitude of what has been accomplished in regard to naval and military reorganisation. "I claim," he said, "for this Administration that it is not only in process of carrying oat, and has largely succeeded in carrying out, a policy of protecting the coaling- stations, protecting the military and commercial ports, rearming the Army, and adding new ships to the Navy, but that it has done more than these things, which are easily enumerated. It has introduced an organisation and a system into the great services which I believe will long bear fruits alter the particular increase in our armaments may have become antiquated through the progress of invention." After a spirited protest against the practice of making the Home Secretary "a final Court of Appeal in criminal matters," and then refusing "him the protection given to other Courts," Mr. Balfour turned to the Irish Question, devoting much of his time to " unmasking " New Tipperary. The speech, like all Mr. Balfour's, was in many ways strikingly magnetic ; but we cannot help wishing that he would remember how dangerous a weapon is the super-intellectual scorn of which he is so fond.
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