All that is excellent, though one act of "high finance"
will sometimes give the country more than ten acts of economy ; but Mr. Lowe complains that the world is not grateful, and that the metropolitan Press, in particular, has made a dead set at him. And he has a nice little theory to account for that dead set. It arose from a determination that the Metropolitan Board of Works should not pay the full price for a piece of land on the Strand Embankment, which, after all, says Mr. Lowe, with a chuckle, " I have made them pay." Is not that deliciously charac- teristic? To acquire a few hundreds for the Treasury, Mr. Lowe first robs London, which made that land out of its own rates, and was entitled to have it for nothing ; then chuckles over his robbery, and then implies that the London Press hates him out of provincial or municipal feeling. We only wish the London Press were municipal, Conservative Reaction 1124 I in which case we should have our fair proportion of Members, Scott and the French Revolution 1124 namely, as many as Scotland ; but as a matter of fact, it is the A First Sketch of English Ill5 I least municipal in the world, and never tired of running down the Literature 112g only city in Europe in which liberty and order completely co- 1127 exist. It is like Mr. Lowe to be so rigid about twopence-half- penny, to chuckle so heartily over a victory better lost than won, and to sneer at criticism as the result of a childish parochialism of feeling. This section of the speech, however, has one great merit, for no one reading it can fail to understand why Mr. Lowe's great powers did not make a successful Chancellor of the Exchequer.
