Lord Granville was entertained last Saturday by the Liver- pool
Reform Club, and though hinting that he might have preferred to speak on such a subject as "Is marriage a failure ?" submitted to the will of the chairman by returning to the well-worn ways of politics. He had never known, he said, so self-glorifying a Government as the present one (which, we suggest, may perhaps be accounted for by the fact that he has hardly ever known one so unfairly run down by its opponents). Lord Granville snubbed the Conservatives for having given so little support to the Liberals when they produced a Local Government Bill, glad as the Conservatives were to accept Liberal support in passing theirs. He rallied Mr. Goschen on the help he had received from Conservative bankers and capitalists in passing his National Debt Act, and suggested that he had made it comparatively easy to pass it by adopting one of the most demoralising motive-powers in English trade,—the allowance of commissions. Lord Gran- ville also paid a second glowing tribute to Lord Herschell's speech on the Parnell Commission,—a speech which, in our opinion, received the praise it got much more through the moderation of its criticism of the Bill, than through the effec- tiveness of that criticism. Lord Granville maintained that, far from having no policy for Ireland, Mr. Gladstone is the only statesman who has one, and protested against the notion that because he has promised to retain the Irish representa- tives at Westminster, he is bound to explain how he will adapt that concession to the necessities of the situation in Ireland,—which would only afford the Unionists "a cock. shot to play at." Finally, Lord Granville threw out the suggestion, on which we have commented elsewhere, that perhaps after all, the Unionists will bring in a proposal for granting Home-rule to Ireland.
