Lord Granville made a brilliant speech at Hanley on Satur-
day, exposing the Tory trick of defending their policy by attributing a policy which never existed to their opponents, and then denouncing it. They resembled a lad of his acquaintance who wanted a jacket with tails, like his schoolfellows, and being refused one, as too small, cut off all their tails. The Government wanted a tail to its coat, and not obtaining one, tried to cut off that of the Liberal Government. He denied absolutely that Liberals ever wished to separate England and Ireland, showed how thoroughly they had worked for the consolidation of the Colonial Empire, and quoted, as a curious instance of the occa- sional result of non-intervention, the conduct of Prussia in the Crimea. She husbanded her resources for another day, refused to intervene, was denounced as " an effaced Power," and only ten years afterwards stood at the head of Europe. He ridiculed the assertion that this Govern- ment was strictly truthful, and asked if that rested on the solemn assurance that our frontier policy had not been changed, or on the secret agreement with Count Schonvaloff, or on the conflicting descriptions of the origin of the Afghan war, or on the diametrically opposed accounts of the foreign situation offered by the Premier and his Chancellor of the Exchequer. He concluded a most effective speech by declaring that the Government of Lord Beaconsfield were all honourable men, and their policy so lofty, that they could not allow Parliament to take a share in the administration of such affairs.
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