Mr. Shaw Lefevre addressed the electors of Reading on Wednesday
evening, in a speech chiefly devoted to criticising recent foreign and colonial policy. We had, he said, within the past few weeks, been on the verge of a war with Burmah, still nearer to a war with China, and actually at war with a petty State in the Malay peninsula. Then there were
rumours from Central Asia, the old Eastern Question was reviving, and we were involving ourselves in new liabilities with Egypt. Then, though he approved of Lord Carnarvon's policy generally, he could not understand the policy of sending Mr. Froude to stump the Cape behind the back of the Parliamentary Government, or the recent acts of the Canadian Ministry in terminating appeals to Great Britain, disallowing the Imperial Copyright Law, and claiming the right to negotiate with the United States direct. He .condemned Mr. Ward Hunt utterly for mismanagement in the dockyards as well as for the occurrences before the country, and argued that the Cabinet owed many of its mistakes to its homo- geneousness. It contained only one class, country gentlemen of strong Church leanings. The speech was a vigorous one, and im- portant in this,—that it shows that Liberals are beginning to -criticise the Government heartily, instead of recalling all manner of passed-away events.
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