There was a great speech of Mr. Balfour's at the
annual meeting of the Primrose League in Covent Garden Theatre, yesterday week, when he gave in his heartiest adhesion to the compact with the Liberal Unionists, and bore the strongest possible testimony to Mr. Chamberlain's invaluable services. In his belief, he said, the recent attacks on Mr. Chamberlain did not even speak the mind of "a minute fraction of the Conservative party." His own inexpressible value for Mr. Chamberlain's aid was, he believed, shared by the vast majority of English Conservatives, and he even ventured to anticipate that instead of there being any prospect of the alliance coming to an end, it would be cemented and continue till it represented a solid National party, representing a large majority of the people of England. A letter from Lord Salisbury was also read, in which he says,—" We have always recognised most gratefully the disinterested and straight- forward loyalty with which Mr. Chamberlain has devoted his great authority and his spendid powers to the defence of the Union. Members of the Primrose League, I feel sure, will take care, on all occasions, to let it be seen, that the bonds which hold the Unionist party together, are not weakened, and that their combined efforts will not be relaxed." So much for the endeavour of "Z." in the New Review, and the knot of friends who, he says, agree with him, to run down Mr. Chamberlain. It has been quite still-born.
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