NEWS OF THE WEEK
T4ORD HARTINGTON was admitted a burgess of Inver- ness on Wednesday, and made in the evening a lengthy speech of great dignity and interest. Part of it was too con- troversial, too much of an answer to Lord Rosebery and Mr. Morley; but it was studded with paragraphs of weight. The leader of the Unionists—who, by-the-way, was so called in a letter from Mr. Chamberlain read to the meeting—answering the charge that he and his colleagues, while deserting Liberalism, had kept their seats on Liberal benches, asked what they would think of the weathercock if it blamed the points of the compass for not shifting about with sufficient celerity. He maintained that Unionists were Liberals, though he had from the first doubted the possibility of their reunion with men who were allied with Mr. Parnell. The Unionists had allied themselves with Tories, and in so doing had liberalised them, as the County Government Bill sufficiently proved. It was essential that a party pledged to the principle of the Bill of 1886 should not be suffered to regain power. The policy of the Parnellites and their allies has been to defy the vote of the people, which rejected Home-rule, and to make the government of Ireland impossible by bringing the governing power of Great Britain into contempt. The only way to meet that policy was by "that strengthening of the law which is called ' coercion,' " and which Liberals abuse. Mr. Dillon commits an illegality, and everybody—the Government, the Unionist Member, the Unionist elector—is held to be responsible except Mr. Dillon 1 The Gladstonians would fail if only there were sufficient persistent endurance in the English people.
