Lord Salisbury was hardly in his beat form when speaking
at the Grand Habitation of the Primrose League on Wednes- day; indeed, he gave the impression of low spirits. Yet he had to congratulate the Primrose League on the great impres- sion made by their organisation on public affairs, which he believed would endure even after the next vibration of the pendulum had restored the Radicals to power and the Con- servatives to Opposition ; for he thought that for the first time the conservative forces of domestic life and the quiet tastes of refined society had been brought to bear on political institutions in a manner that promised fair,—as we under- stand what he said,—to render Radicalism less coarse and ostentatious, as well as to render Conservatism more potent. He pointed out how great a change had taken place in the attitude of the people towards the House of Lords, towards religious establishments, and towards education, and then passed to an apology for his failure in Armenia, which was so ineffectual that we think it would have been better to pass it over altogether than to reproach the previous Government with commencing a policy of barren expostulation, which was bound to be perfectly hopeless with a divided Europe behind it. Even on Egypt his attitude was not at all a commanding one. He justified the Nile expedition by saying that we are bound to restore Egypt to her former magnitude,—the magnitude of Egypt when we entered into our protectorate,—before we resign, "if we are to resign," the trust that had been placed in our hands, and that the Nile expedition is nothing but a reconnaissance in force to ascertain our prospects of an early recovery of the Soudan. Surely Lord Salisbury must know perfectly well that we can never let Egypt fall back into the misery and chaos which preceded our interference in the government of that now renovated country. Is it not time to avow frankly what we all know to be inevitable ?
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