Sir Michael Hicks-Beach has been haranguing the Orange Conservatives of
Belfast in a tone of great and rather heady triumph. "The late Liberal Government, —he had almost said the late Liberal party,"—had found to its great surprise that it was no longer the popular party, at the late elections, and "except for the purpose of criticising the action of the Conservative Government, there was no more need for their continued exist- ence." Now, Sir M. Hicks-Beach is a strong man, and ought not so easily to. lose his head with the champagne of a little success. What was there in the late defeat of the Liberals more conclusive, or, indeed, anything like so final, as the memorable defeats sus- tained by the Conservatives between 1842 and 1874 ? What would Sir M. Hicks-Beach have said if a Liberal politician in 1868 had talked of the " late Conservative party," and had declared that there was no reason for its continued existence, except to ensure a certain amount of criticism of the action of a Liberal Adminis- tration ? He would have said very justly that such a Liberal orator had lost his head, and was not aware that the utility of the representatives of a popular minority, far from being destroyed by the fact that they must consent to be also a Parliamentary minority, becomes even greater than before, since the party in power represent their constituents both by words and by deeds, while the party in Opposition represent their constituents by words alone. And there is no surer sign that the tables which have been turned, will turn again, than the influence which success seems to have in dazzling some minds till they lose all their sobriety and reticence.
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