The Birkenhead News and Wirral General Advertiser. — 1883-11-03 (Birkenhead, Merseyside, England)

LORD SALISBURY.  Lord Salisbury delivered two characteristically brilliant speeches at Reading on Tuesday. They came as a relief after the platitudes of which the readers of the newspapers had been having such a tremendous stream from Sir Stafford Northcote, and clearly demonstrated his rhetorical superiority to the Devonshire baronet, though as a statesman he is a long way behind his colleague and rival. Indeed, it may be as well admitted that if an ability to say smart things and put a decent face on an ugly and irredeemably bad case were all that ought to be required in a Premier Lord Salisbury would be admirably adapted to be the next First Minister to the Crown. He pitches his song in an ad misericordiatit key. According to him the outlook on every hand is gloomy, we being threatened with social convulsions at home and serious troubles abroad. He may honestly believe that we are faced by a series of tremendous difficulties, daily growing in magnitude ; we have no doubt that he has implicit faith in the idea that if lie and his friends will only chant their dismal refrain sufficiently long and sufficiently loudly a large number of innocent persons will become alarmed at they do not exactly know what and rush for protection into the arms of the Conservative party. But persons who found their opinions on facts, not speeches, will probably go on thinking that never was the position of England more stable than it is at the present time and that never has our country inherited so large •a measure of prosperity as to enable her to draw on futurity with the confidence that she may do now. Of course, Lord Salisbury kindly gives it to be understood that if his counsel is taken the doom impending over the Empire may even at this, the eleventh hour, be averted. The remedies he recommends for our desperate state are, however, to say the least of them, very peculiar. We are to deny Ireland a measure of self-government, because the granting of each a measure might be regarded as a sop ta the Home Ru!ers and because Lord Hartington and Mr. Chamberlain have enunciated different opinions of the way in which the country ought to be dealt with; wo are to continuo to occupy Egypt, because if we left it France, having a weak constitution and being, therefore, likely to full a prey to impulse and to be served by grasping and aggressive officials, might be led into taking it, even against the will of those w:io for the present nominally rule her; and the County franchise must not be extende I, because its expansion would remove certain safeguards against hasty and ill-considered legislation and enable the present Liberal majority to so manipulate tho redistribution of seats as to guarantee the next Parliament being a Radical one. These are his main palliatives, but he adds to them tiro proposition that better homes should be provided for the working classes. There can be no doubt that his last proposition will be largely sympathised with, there being a growing impression that, after all, the particular description of reform which we most need at the present time is social reform. Ho is aware that there is a series of great conflicts ahead But he does not despair. While he cynically sneers at the "sublimated and ethereal essence called moral force," especially in its application to Egyptian ' affairs, he indicates that there is something about which he can become enthusiastic—the House of Lords. It is but justice to say that he is a bold man and that the veiled threats of Mr. John Bright and others have not awed him. If li falls he will fall with his face to / the fie, not his back; and so ho would have the chamber of peers act. The fear of death, he says, persuades men to do many things, but it does not persuade them to commit suicide. This is a clover, figurative way of stating that the House of Lords is prepared to resist certain contemplated reforms and at the same time determined to make a stubborn fight for the preservation of its privileges. Liberal statesmen ate, however, not likely to be  deterred by Lord Salisbury's dramatic heroics from pressing onward. Sir Charles Dilke has, probably, expressed their views in stating that if the House of Lords rejects the County Franchise Bill it will be sent to them again by the Commons, and that if they venture to reject it a second time it will remain to be proved whether the peers or the people are the stronger.