Mr. Balfour addressed a meeting at Haddington on Tuesday in
support of Mr. Craig Sellar, who has been adopted as the Unionist candidate to oppose Mr. Haldane. Mr. Balfour began by paying a tribute to the ability, high character, and modera- tion of Mr. Haldane, but observed that it was not these qualities which called for consideration. What they had to consider was the Government of which Mr. Haldane had lately become a member. That Government, Mr. Balfour emphatically declared, differed fundamentally from the opinions professed by Unionists on Imperial affairs, the relations between Great Britain and Ireland, and the Fiscal problem. Mr. Haldane had allied his fortunes with the head of a party which was pledged to the doctrines of Gladstouian Home-rule, and to the "blind and stupid adherence to certain fixed practices and maxims which had their meaning and their reasons forty years ago under then existing conditions of international trade, but which have their meaning, in my judgment at all events, no longer." To Mr. Balfour's insistence on the Home-rule bogey we have only one reply to make. Why, if Home-rule is the pressing menace which he now declares it to be, did not Mr. Balfour tackle the question of Redistribution in time, and make the Union safe ? He had time to turn the publican's annual license into a freehold and to pass an unnecessary and per- functory Aliens Bill, and yet could find none to safeguard the cause which he now tells us is in deadly peril. Either Mr. Balfour betrayed his trust to the Union by not reducing the Irish vote, or he is now raising a sham scare. We, who adopt the second alternative, are at any rate accusing Mr. Balfour of the minor offence.
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