our brief review of the mail papers two days ago we had no room to say anything about Mr. Balfour's speech in defence of the Government, which hurt his own friends in the Press very much more than his opponents. This is only to be expected; when a man makes a slip, his friends feel it much more than his enemies, for the latter "always expected he would do something of the kind." Nearly all the Government organs write in anger as much as in sorrow of Mr. Balfour's very unsatisfactory excuses, unsatisfactory, not so much for what they actually say, as for the indication they give that Mr. Balfour is too indifferent to realise the gravity of the situation. The Satwrday Review is a supporter of the Government, but it says in its issue of the 13th ult..—It would shock a good many people to describe Mr. Balfour as frivolous. Yet on this: occasion he seems to have absolutely failed to realise the seriousness of the charges against the Government, or to have risen to the height of the occasion. From the manner of his luncheon speech at the Manchester Conservative Club, we gather that Mr. Balfour regards the adverse criticism which is apparently soaking through even his philosophy as merely a more than usually vigorous exercise of party polemics. Ho never made a greater mistake in his life. The Government is now face to face, not with Her Majesty's Opposition, but with the nation, We are willing to make every allowance for Me. Balfour's idiosyneracies in the matter of transacting the popular side of his duties, We know that he very rarely reads the newspapers; and that ho never prepares the wording of his speeches. Kxtemporaneous oratory its charm and its danger. In a moment of national emergency like the present, we are a little impatient of the indolence that will not choose, and weigh, and if necessary write down, words that are addressed to the anxious ears of millions, " Unanimity is worth several army corps "—what can Mr. Balfour's best friends, amongst whom we reckon ourselves, make of such a phrase as that? It means that Parliamentary and electoral support is to be bought by thousands of lives and millions of pounds, The unanimous support of the Radical party, in and out of Parliament, is not worth the fiftieth part of a single army corps, not worth the bones of a single "gentleman in khaki." Brutally cynical Mr. Balfour is not. The sentence was obviously a clumsy attempt to express a commonplace idea, namely, that union is strength. But as Renan said, Une phrase mal agence repend pres que toujours d une pense inezacte," What really great man ever cared a row of pins about unanimity He proposes what he believes to be right he carries it if he can; and if he cannot, ho leaves the responsibility to others, What the Saturday Review says is repeated in different words by any number of journals, The only farther extract we have room for is from a letter in the Times of the 10th ult. signed "Corruptio Optimi Pessima." The writer says:—
reposed in Mr. Balfour by many English-Sir, The ma the gpnfdence hitherto men who have no special regard for mere pare politicians, the keener, I fancy, will their disappointment on reading his speech yesterday at Manchester. For, shorn of rhetorical embellishments, what
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.