Mr. Labouchere made a speech on Wednesday at what is
called the "Eleusis Club" dinner at Chelsea, in which he insisted vehemently on the duty of evacuating Egypt, on the wickedness of the Matabele war, on the folly of increasing our Navy, on the necessity for fully abolishing the House of Lords, sand on the wisdom of finding pensions for every working man who has reached the age of sixty-five. He wished to see a Registration Bill passed, which would, " so far as possible," give all men a vote. And he desired to have all plural voting abolished, all Members of Parliament paid, and all the expenses of elections thrown upon the public purse. If these measures were carried, Mr. Labou- chore thought they might laugh at the Tory Party. Why P Except the pension for all working men of sixty-five, the United States are much in the position for which Mr. Labouchere is so anxious. Their great Federation has no great dependencies. It has a rather weak Navy, though one that is now stronger than it was a year or two ago. It has (in Mr. Labouchere's sense) no House of Lords. It has uni- versal suffrage and payment of Members, and yet it has a great party which does enormous jobs (like the creation of a pension-fund for the survivors of the War), which puts on a ruinous tariff, which plays tricks with the currency, and which resists the reform of the Civil Service. We suspect that the new voters would prove quite as reactionary as the old, and much more likely to take bribes freely.
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