This day week, Lord Harlington delivered, at Accrington, his first
speech to the electors of North-East Lancashire, and a very masterly speech it was. He called it a mere preliminary skirmish, a reconnaissance on the position of the Government, to unmask some of the stratagems which the enemy was likely to play off upon them. He explained how unprecedented was a dissolution in the midst of a working Session, announced and opened as one intended to carry great measures, by a Government not only not defeated, but as yet cordially supported in almost every- thing it had this Session attempted to do ; and pointed out how likely it seemed that the whole object of the Session was,—not to carry measures (for the Irish relief measures might quite as easily have been carried after an autumn dissolution as before a spring dissolution),—but to connect the Opposition in the mind of the country with the Home-rule agitation, and if possible with the policy of "Obstruction." We have given a sufficient account in another column of this part of the speech, and of Lord Hart- ington's admirable attack on Lord Beaconsfield for appealing to the country to return a Parliament to support him in his " arrested " influence abroad, without ever hinting how or for what Furpose that influence was to be used ; and need only add here that Lord Hartington's ridicule of Lord Beaconsfield's sesquipedalian manifesto, and especially his picture of the puzzled elector, when told that the objects of the Government were " the consolidation of co-operation," and the defeat of the policy of decomposition," was very lively and effective.
