Sir William Harcourt made a speech at Braintree on Saturday,
at the end of a regular Gladstonian invasion of Essex, in which he laid about him with much energy, and rained blows on Lord Salisbury, Mr. Goschen, and the Duke of Devonshire. He called Lord Salisbury "the Malaprop of Politics," which strikes us as a most Malaprop nickname; made rather good fun of the Prime Minister's retaliatory theory of finance, remembering that when he himself had fought out the question of retaliation with a Fair-trader, the latter had found it impossible to specify what he would really like to have dearer, except "pianofortes and artificial flowers ;" and described the whole Tory Party as "those who aspire to nothing, attempt nothing, and accomplish nothing," a very curious description of a party which has accomplished more, and accomplished it even by Gladstonian admission, than any Government of recent times. The reform of Local Government, the reform of the London Municipality, the concession of Free Education, the Allotments Act, the Small Holdings Bill,—are all these accomplished facts nothing even in Gladstonian eyes? If they are, then Tory nothings are infinitely greater than Gladstonian somethings.
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