Lord Salisbury made a rather venomous speech at the meet-
ing of the Middlesex Conservative Association on Monday, in which he first reproved. Mr. Shaw-Lefevre for asserting that in Lord Salisbury's speech at the Merchant Taylors' dinner any intimation had been given that the Lords would reject,or ought to reject, the Irish Land Bill ; and then went on to indicate in every possible way his own detestation of that measure, and his contempt for statesmen who allowed the tail of their own party to determine the course of its head. Ho endeavoured to make out that the log of the Liberal Party was full of records of Irish Land Bills which had destroyed each other, and ho tried to make light of this Bill,—even if it should pass,—as an enactment cer- tain to be repealed by the next bit of Liberal legislation on the same subject. He declared that the effort to satisfy the Radicals was taking all force and national fibre out of the Government, both at home and abroad, and attributed to " the Quaker yoke " the reversal of his own policy in Afghanistan, as well as that of his colleagues in South Africa and Ireland. If, after all, Lord Salisbury should end by advising the House of Lords to pass the Irish Land Bill, he will see iu what an undignified position he has placed himself, by these superfluous and ferocious assaults on a measure which he has not decided to reject, and may be compelled by the tail of his own. party ultimately to accept.
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