The ET ra-Radicals are busy apparently preparing their pro- gramme,
the first sign of which has been an amusing and witty
speech delivered yesterday week by Mr. E. A. Leatham to his Hud- dersfield constituents. He took up once more his old simile for the Liberal party,—a Dutch clock in need of repair,—and declared that in the early part of last Session, when two great leaders of
Liberalism had betaken themselves in despair, " the one to the pursuit of literature and the other to that of salmon," and when "the only parts which every one could see still in their places were the heavy weights," it looked very unlikely that the party should be on its legs again before the end of the Session. However, the genuine Conservatives egged on the Conservative Cabinet into reaction, just as the genuine• Radicals always egg on the Liberal leaders into reform, and the Liberals found that they had not fathomed " the depth of the riches of Conservative impolicy." They had forgotten that the Conservative party was led by two• statesmen, one of whom (Lord Salisbury) " did not know how to measure his phrases, and the other (Mr. Disraeli) did not know how to phrase his measures." The true Conservatives, however, could not do without Mr. Disraeli. He is their " professional bowler," and if he were once to begin to bowl for the other side, he would take all their wickets in one " over." And so it happened that when Mr. Gladstone showed, the enormity of the attack on Dissenters, in Lord Sandon's Endowed %Schools Bill, Mr. Disraeli was allowed to throw over his more violent colleague, and to postpone openly reactionary Church measures for the present.
Previous page
