Mr. Gladstone, as a resident in Marylebone, made a speech
at the Vestry Hall, St, Pancras, yesterday week, in favour of
the Liberal nominees for the borough at the next election, Sir- T. Chambers and Mr. D. Grant. He congratulated the Liberals on having done all in their power to show how little they sym- pathised with the policy of Parliamentary Obstruction,—a policy, he said, not peculiar to any party, and quite as much favoured by the supporters of the present Government when in Opposition, as by any other section of the House of Commons. Nay, Mr. Sullivan had shown that the most strenuous obstructors of one Parliament had been rewarded with high office in the next. Mr. Gladstone pleaded for more hearty union amongst the Liberals, and especially eulogised the Nonconformists for being willing to waive, for the• sake of union, even the cry on which they as Nonconformists laid most stress, the cry of Disestablishment. Mr. Gladstone was san- guine enough to hope that the Government are really ready to reunite Afghanistan under a single native ruler, if they can, and to adjourn the sending of a new Envoy till the native Ameer chosen had made declarations on the subject. But in this we fear Mr. Gladstone was anticipating a policy of which there is little evidence. He praised the constitution of Eastern Roumelia, and, indeed, attacked the Government chiefly for the attempts it had made to be all things to all men,—to- gain the Home-rulers at one time, to gain the fierce enemies of Home-rule by indiscriminate denunciation of Home-rulers at another time,—to gain Free-traders by sound exposition of Free-trade one day, and Protectionists by appointing an Agri- cultural Commission of inquiry to investigate what everybody of any knowledge has fully made up his mind upon, the next.
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