Mr. Asquith made a long speech at Althorpe to something
like ten thousand people on Thursday in Aithorpe Park. It Mr. Asquith made a long speech at Althorpe to something like ten thousand people on Thursday in Aithorpe Park. It as not a speech marked by the distinction, force, and skill which has characterised all his recent speeches. He twitted the House of Lords with the number of rustic Peers who will rush up to vote against the Home-rule Bill ; but he forgot to tell his audience that the great majority of the thirty or forty Peers whom he complimented as statesmen of great ability, are just as much opposed to this absurd and ill. drafted measure as the rustic Peers themselves. He attacked the Opposition for its tactics in the House of Commons; and we are not concerned to deny that in one or two instances he hit a real blot in those tactics; but as regards the great point of all, the claim of the Unionists to insist on an appeal to the people against a Bill of which at the General Election -the people had no conception whatever, we cannot appeal to a better authority against Mr. Asquith, the Home Secretary, than Mr. Asquith, the private Member. It was he who told the Government before the Dissolution that unless they re- Tealed the general structure of the Bill before the last General Election, the Opposition would say, and would have a right to say, that the measure had never received the sanction of the people. But his advice was not followed, though his mouth was stopped by a Cabinet office. Under these circumstances, we submit that nothing can be more constitutional than a con- tinuous and deliberate policy of resistance to a Government which tries to prevent a separate and explicit appeal to the people on this great and most unconstitutional measure.
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