Members of Parliament are getting rapidly back: to their town houses for the opening of Parliament on Tuesday. The meeting of the Liberal party, which is to be held after all at the Reform Club, has given a standing topic to the quidnuncs in the West end, but the lines on which the proceedings will run are definitely laid down, and nothing is likely to mar a practical harmony. Sir Henry Fowler and Mr. Asquith have given in their adhesion to the choice of Sir Henry Campbell-Ban-norman as the successor of Sir William Harcourt, and those who really felt the treatment which Sir Willinm received when he was shunted at the time of Mr. Gladstone's retirement will not now press for his recall. In those days of the early nineties there wore a few who thought the rivalry of Lord Rosebery and Sir William Harcourt could only end in the choice of a man of Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman's stamp. Their prognostication has come true. Sir Henry is a canny Scot, with £50,000 a year, takes life ily, has all the Parliamentary experience requisite, and will probably succeed in pulling together the disorganised sections of the Liberal party in the House of Commons. It would not be surprising if the active aristocratic section which favours Lord Rosobery's return to the leadership of the Liberal party as a whole in both Houses finds in Sir Henry ultimately the main obstacle to the fulfilment of its wishes. So far as the Opposition programme for the session is concerned, the Liberal leader in the House of Commons has no heroic role to play. The address will probably puss without any distinct challenge. Government bills will be at the best of a humdrum character, but
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.