In the speech at Glasgow, Mr. Balfour echoed Sir William
Thomson's reproach to English politicians, that they are too impatient in looking for the fruits of a wise and firm policy in Ireland. We are reaping some of the fruits of that policy already ; but we must not look for a great harvest all at once. The chief root of discontent in Ireland is agrarian, and the true remedy, as Mr. Balfour insisted at Glasgow, and repeated the following day at Edinburgh, is to make the occupier the owner of his land. Mr. Balfour expressed his firm belief that both the Conservatives and the Liberal. Unionists had gained by the alliance between them ; he did not mean that they had gained politically, but that they had gained in political knowledge and judgment by the better knowledge they now possessed of their ally's purposes and aims. On the disinterested patriotism of the Liberal Unionists, Mr. Balfour pronounced a very high eulogium.
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