Mr. Labouchere, speaking at Northampton on Wednesday, indugged in a
grand tirade against the Matabele War, and attacked the English settlers there for treating the Africans as if they were not human beings, on the strength of asser- tions which are quite as unproved as many of those similar -assertions on previous occasions which have been shown to be wholly untrustworthy. Mr. Labouchere's only remarkable sentence appears to have been that in which he expressed his wonder that the English people should put np with an hereditary caste of " checkers-out,"—as he chooses to denote the House of Lords. That expression shows a good deal of Mr. Labouchere's political smartness, but it will not injure the House of Lords. Perhaps it will rather popularise them. We do not think the English constituencies feel half enough -dislike for partisans who attend meetings only to handle roughly those who interrupt their favourite speakers. We are not sure that the people do not positively admire that class of athletic politicians who argue with their arms and lists, not with their tongues. The House of Lords will not be at all the worse for being likened to political roughs, though, rationally speaking, the comparison is far from a happy one.
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