A great Conservative solemnity took place at Woodstock on Tuesday,
Lord Randolph Churchill there engaging, as it were, to be more amenable to party discipline for the future, though indicating clearly enough that his own allegiance was given rather to Lord Salisbury than to Sir Stafford Northcote or Lord Beaconsfield. Lord Randolph Churchill, repeating a remark that" it is of vital importance that the Conservative party should be united," said, in the hyperbolic language lie so much affects, that no wiser remark could possibly be made "by the wisest man upon this earth ;" further, he wished to promote this unity in the most positive sense, not in that negative sense in which the spectators of a play show unity, simply by failing to show any discord. After this hauling down of the Fourth Party's black flag by Lord Randolph Churchill, Lord Salisbury made a great speech, in which he referred casually to the "sagacious guidance of Sir Stafford Northcote," did his best to depreciate the Concert of Europe, to throw discredit on the cession of Dulcigno to Montenegro, to assail the proposed "buccaneering expedition to Smyrna," to make light of the claims of Greece, and to weaken by every word he could think of the influence of the present Government in the East. Then he launched into Irish questions ; declared that Mr. Gladstone's Land Act of 1870 was the beginning of a whole host of new evils which were now accumulating upon us ; that you could not make yeomen by legislation ; that if you could, you should not lavish public money on Irish breakers of the law, instead of on English keepers of the law ; that the meddling with "settlement and entail," talismanic as these words are supposed to be, will have no magic effect ; that the Government have been shamefully weak in not coercing Ire- land; and that coercion must precede all remedial measures, if indeed there be any measures possible which would be reme- dial,—except the great remedy of all, the victory of Lord Salis- bury over the Liberal Government.
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