Lord Rosebery's speech at Reigate on Tuesday was in the
main an emphasized statement that the Liberal leaders accepted Mr. Gladstone's Manifesto, and intended to walk under his umbrella ; but it contained some felicitous sentences. He declared that Tory descriptions of policy just now are "like the faint murmurs of embarrassed somnambulists." "For the last five years Conservatives have lived on a diet of anathema and abuse," which are good and amusing condiments, but make bad staples of food. "You cannot grow fat on pepper and Worcester- shire sauce ;" which is more good-natured, though perhaps less humorous, than Charles Reade's statement that French Deputies were like" wild beasts fed on peppered tongue." His definition of the progress made in the condition-of-the-poor question was, too, very good. If, he said, the progress in practical improvement has been little, "the progress in sympathy has been great,"—and he might have added that in sympathy there is leverage. No passion is so strong for good and for evil as the passion of pity. Lord Rosebery made a warm and just appeal for shorter hours for railway servants, which quite carried away his audience, but forgot to put clearly the only reason for giving them protection. If grown men choose to overwork themselves they have a right to do it, unless they endanger the community thereby. A railway pointsman stupid with fatigue does endanger it.
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