Sir William Harcourt's speech at Derby on Wednesday was a
masculine and confident one, though we doubt whether the confidence he himself felt in his own ideas was at all equalled by the confidence which he felt in the enthusiasm of his party on behalf of those ideas. He identified himself with the Veto Bill in the most vehement fashion, we sup- pose from a wish for political martyrdom. Considering the figures of the Evesham poll, which he had just heard, he could hardly have questioned the fact that the tide of popu- larity is retreating from the shores of the Gladstonians and setting towards the shores of their opponents. And his calm assumption that the majority of the voters of the three King- doms is on his side must have been a bit of Plantagenet bounce. He laboured needlessly his denial of the right of the Lords to compel a Dissolution, which, so far as we know, no one has ever asserted. What the Unionists say is, that before the Lords can be expected to yield to Lord Rosebery's policy,. the country must declare itself positively on Lord Rosebery's side, and that so far from its having done so, it has hitherto shown its reluctance, not to say its decided indisposition, to sustain Lord Rosebery's Government. The speech was some- what gloomy, for Sir William Harcourt does not like to see how little favour his democratic Budget has attracted to the Govern- ment, and how little enthusiasm the attack on the Lords has roused, for he evidently approves that attack almost as much, as he does his own scheme of democratic finance, though he has never relished having Lord Rosebery put over him. He poured out his wrath on the Liberal Unionists almost as freely as did Mr. Gladstone when he called them an " abortion," and) he took great delight in the gradual substitution of pi•ofessedt Conservatives for Liberal Unionists. But if the Liberal Unionists disappear only in name, and the Parliamentary Conservatives of the future are all leavened with their prin- ciples and influence, how will that help him P " The country,' he says, " has really no taste for cross-bred politicians." Perhaps not for the name, but very decidedly, we believe, for the thing. The old Tory is as obsolete as the dodo.
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