The Duke of Devonshire addressed the Liberal Unionist Council at
the Palace Hotel, Westminster, on Thursday afternoon. In a speech of considerable vigour, and marked by all the sincerity and common-sense' which used to charac- terise the speeches which made Lord Hartington a true leader of Englishmen in the fateful days of 1886, he dealt with Lord Rosebery's covert appeals to the Liberal Unionists to go back to the Liberal party. He failed, he declared, to see in the speeches which Lord Rosebery had recently delivered that he had done anything to reconstruct the party on a basis which offered any inducements, either to them or to those within it whose confidence in their leaders had recently been weakened, to join his own standard. Taken as a whole, the speech' was as manly and straightforward a declaration as any ever made by the Duke of Devonshire, and we trust it will be taken to heart by any Liberal Unionists, if there be any, of which we are somewhat doubtful, who are inclined to ask themselves whether they ought not to go over and join Lord Rosebery now he has become a Unionist.
Previous page
