Lord Salisbury made a speech at the annual dinner of
the Constitutional Union on Wednesday at St. James's Hall, which contained something more than the old criticisms on the parti- coloured character of the Liberalism of the century (in which, by the way, he forgets the still more remarkable patchwork of which the Conservatism of the century is made up). He announced it as a great law that you can never depend on the Conservatism of the extremely rich,—because they have so much, that they can afford to lose a good deal without missing it. You can only depend on the Conservatism of the moderately well-to-do, the people who would lose their all if the foundations of proprietary right were in any way unsettled. It is to those who have no margin, those to whom revolution would mean a great inroad on their habits and comforts, that Lord Salisbury trusts implicitly the safety of the Constitution. As for Lord Hartington, he is too rich to care. He might lose a great deal, and still find all he wanted well within his reach. That is a very neat theory of Lord Salisbury's, but, as we have elsewhere shown, it will hardly hold water.
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