Lord Rosebery spoke at Manchester on Wednesday, and the tone
of his speech is, to our ears, one of discouragement, not to say almost despondency. He was discouraged by the difficulty of getting any measure passed by the House of Commons; he was discouraged by the attitude of the Inde- pendent Labour party ; he was evidently a good deal dis- couraged by the recent murder in Ireland, though he faintly hoped that it was not agrarian, and the only bright spot apparently in the political prospect was for him Sir William Harcourt's Budget, which, he said, had " lifted Sir William Harcourt at a single bound to the front rank of the financiers of the country." Probably his most serious discouragement is due to his peerage. He frets more and more, we imagine. over his exile from the House of Commons, where the whole plot of the political drama is laid, and feels like a man who is expected to direct a great series of operations from a, distance. without perhaps even the advantage of a second-in-command willing and eager to consult his views and to give effect to his suggestions. He is perfectly well aware that the Liberal Ministry will effect nothing till it can obtain a much larger majority in the House of Commons than it now com- mands; and we infer (perhaps mistakenly) from his tone that, in his heart he feels very faint hopes of obtaining that increased majority at the next General Election.
