Mr. Gladstone made a great speech this day week, at
the Farringdon Street Memorial Hall, to the Council of the Liberal and Radical Union. He asked, first, who it was that was resisting the emancipation of the Metropolis by the reform of the government of London, and remarked that it was the same party who are resisting the grant of self-government to Ireland, which is perfectly true; but Mr. Gladstone forgot to add that popular London, as a whole, is evidently unfavourable to Home- rule either for itself or for Ireland, since a very large proportion of its representatives are pledged to the Conservative view. Totally different in principle as the cases of London and of Ireland undoubtedly are, it can hardly be a reproach to the Tory Government that they decline to give to London what London declines to ask for. If popular London has been most unfairly taxed, as Mr. Gladstone asserts, for works which ought to have fallen on the wealth and not on the industry of London, all the more remarkable is the steadiness with which popular London declines to resent that injustice, and to join the party which desires to revolutionise the Constitution of the United Kingdom.
