NEWS OF THE WEEK.
ON the day on which our next issue appears the first pollings will take place in an Election which promises to be one of the most momentous in our whole history. The advice which we ventured to offer to the Tariff Reformers— that they should make it clear to moderate men of all kinds that though they did not abandon Tariff Reform in any shape or form, votes given in this Election to Tariff Reformers would not be used to put a tariff into operation before the electors had had an opportunity of judging of the merits of that tariff—has not been accepted. We believe that if it had been there could have been no question whatever as to the result of the elections. The present Government would have been thrown from office and a strong Unionist Government would have taken their place. We are not so foolish, how- eveAes to sulk because the Unionist Party has adopted bad electoral tactics. It was our duty to point out what we believed to be the path of victory; but because the Unionists have made victory unnecessarily difficult for themselves we art. not going to defeat our own ends by any want of energy or loyalty in our support of the Unionist cause.
