Sir Lyon Playf air took the same view as Mr.
Gladstone on the licensing clauses in the rather bitter party speech which he made at Leeds on Tuesday. In that speech be maintained that a licence simply gives a permission to sell alcoholic thinks for a year, and in effect that a good hotel which has been established for fifty years with no fear whatever of being dis- established, is entitled to no more consideration than a beer- house which got a licence only last year. He also indulged in a philippic against the Irish administration of Mr. Balfour, but condemned (as he had condemned before) the "Plan of Cam- paign." He was vehement, however, in protesting the right of combination of the Irish tenants, which we do not believe that the Government have ever once assailed. But Sir Lyon Playfair adopts in mass all the formulas of his party on the subject of Ireland. We had hoped that his gift for an impartial judgment of the situation was greater than it proves to be.
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