NEWS OF THE WEEK.
TORD HARTINGTON has had the courage to deliver a strongly Unionist speech in Aberdeen, which was unex- pectedly well received. Mr. Gladstone's recent utterances have awakened a certain bitterness in his late colleague, as in some other prominent Unionists, on which we have commented else- where ; but the general speech was in Lord Hartington's usual -tone of rather haughty calm. After denouncing Mr. Glad- stone's practice of aiding the " Union of Hearts " by over- charged descriptions of cruelties committed by the English in Ireland, Lord Hartington pointed out the attempts to arouse Separatist feeling in Wales and Scotland, and said they were due to Mr. Gladstone's perception that a demand for a Federal Constitution—that is, for " the disintegration of the Empire into fragments "—would materially facilitate his task ; and asked whether it was true that English local legislation was not of the last importance to Scotland. He replied seriatim, to Mr. Gladstone's comments on the candidates now seeking election, specially pointing out that Mr. Seymour Keay, whatever his views on land, would vote with the most extreme party for every rash experiment, and quoted a speech by Mr. Gladstone to show that the Liberal leader—" the Home-rule leader," as he called him—was in entire accord with Mr. Balfour on Catholic education. He maintained that at present Home-rule was not advocated for any blessings it would confer, Parliament being ready to do anything that could be done, but "as an act of retributive reparation " for wrongs done in the past,—which was not statesmanlike.
