Lord Rosebery's speeches at Cardiff yesterday week and this day
week were most remarkable, as we have elsewhere said, for the change of tone as to the Dissolution on the House of Lords question,—in relation to which Sir William Harcourt's speech at Derby on Wednesday took just the same ambiguous and dilatory line,—and in the declarations which he made as to the development of Home-rule for Ireland into " Home-rule all round," and the virtual recognition of Wales as a separate kingdom. But we have said enough on these sub- jects elsewhere. He devoted a great part of his first speech to the Welsh Disestablishment Bill, arguing that the essence of a Church is spiritual, and that Establishment or Disestab- lishment is a secondary question which it is rightly left to majorities to decide, and which is not a question between God and man, but a question between men only, and one which strictly local opinion ought to settle. The speech was also lightened by a jocular patch, comparing the political programme of the Opposition to a fraudulent raree-show at.a country fair with nothing inside it. But that jocular patch was rather artificial, and though his audience laughed duti- fully, we are not sure that they really enjoyed it. It rang very hollow.
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