Sir William Harcourt delivered a speech at Southport on Friday,
full, like Mr. Grant Duff's speech at Newtown, of scorn for the existing Government. We have given a description of it elsewhere, but must allude here to the noteworthy point made as to the authorship of the " ancient institutions " which Conservatives so value. The Tories always forget that the Liberals made them. It was a rebel who founded the House of Commons. It was the Whigs of 1688 who founded the Consti- tution, as we now know it, with its limited monarchy and col- lectively responsible Cabinet. It was Liberals who esta- blished the new Poor Law, which saved landed property from becoming valueless ; and it was Liberals who carried the Reform Bill of 1832, and all the great reforms which succeeded it, the only exception being Household Suffrage, which Mr.. Disraeli purloined from them. As Sir W. Harcourt puts it:— "If a limited Monarchy is rooted in the affections of a free people, by whose actions were those limitations framed which have brought the rule of an ancient Throne into conformity with the will of the nation ? If ' a proud aristocracy has been reconciled to a reformed House of Commons,' whose work was that P If the House of Commons itself has become a more ade- quate representation of the nation, is that not due to the action of the Liberal party ? And if Solomon were called to judgment,. I think he would have little difficulty in determining to which mother the care of the English Constitution should be decreed." The Tories are useful in their way, too, but they no more made the British Constitution, than the drags made the coach.
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