Sir Wilfrid Lawson made a sharp attack on the Government
at a meeting at Whitehaven on Tuesday, maintaining that their- great fault had been that from first to last, from the cry against harassing interests, to the invasion of Afghanistan, they had preferred "British interests to British honour." They had' pursued, he said, a "spirited foreign policy and a spirituous home policy." "They had destroyed mankind abroad by bat- teries, and at home by bottles." The Tories charged the Liberals. with vituperation, and the charge was true, if it NM vitupera- tion to reply, as the prophet did, to the question, "Art thou- he that troubleth Israel ?" "I have not troubled Israel, but thou and thy father's house." He honoured the Conservatives for- the bull-dog tenacity with which they stuck to their crazy convictions, for the persistent floundering with which they tumbled into one bog after another in search of the ignis fatuus "glory ;" but he did not honour them for feebly lamenting that the Liberals would go on saying these things, till they might even manage to prevent their re-election. In a word, Sir Wilfrid_ thinks the right cue is to proclaim our respect for the stubborn tenacity of the Conservatives, while warning the people against their dangerous thickheadedness and folly. They do their best, perhaps,—but then their best is so very bad, that they may easily ruin us by doing their best.
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