Oct. 23, Mr. Luoyp Grorcer's speech at Leeds would probably have been more interesting if it had been delivered a few days earlier or a few days later. He has, at any rate for the time being, no future as a Prime Minister: therefore he has no programme to unfold such as would otherwise have been the natural sequel to the Manchester speech. And until it is known whether Mr.
Bonar Law is going to the country and what he is going on, there is nothing for the late Prime Minister to attack. He therefore fell back on defence of the Coalition's record; and almost any speaker, most of all Mr. Lloyd George, is less interesting in defence than attack. It is always easy to pick holes, when ther fairly or unfairly, in a self-justification. After all, Mr. Lloyd George's best answer to the Carlton Club is that men like Lord Balfour, Mr. Austen Chamberlain, Lord Birkenhead, Sir Robert Home and Lord Lee, men who in their different capacities and temperaments stand for what is both most brilliant and most sound in political life, are on his side. They may never join with him in forming the rumoured centre party; they may even be opposed to him in days to come; but as regards his past services, they will have nothing to do with the hotheads and implacables of Unionism, for whom they have fairly shown their contempt.
Speculation as to the formation of a new party must wait for satisfaction until cir¢umstances generally take definite shape. The telegrams are contradictory, one saying that Mr. Lloyd George means to stand simply as a Liberal, which at once raises the question, a Liberal of what complexion?—another that national interests first, against mere party gain is to be his keynote at the general election. He cannot have had much time yet to think out the framework of a new party, if indeed he is meditating one. And whether he is or is not, seems to depend very largely on the behaviour of Mr. Bonar Law's friends.. The new Prime Minister has a high repute for steadiness, solidity and an almost superhuman power of assimilating facts; but he thas not the name for great imagination; and for want of it, though he is not easily to be coerced, he may find it difficult to guide the Unionist party in the way that the country needs. The days of the old dyed-in-the-wool toryism are gone, with the ascendency of the territorial magnates in whom it was entrenched.
Their place has been taken by a plutocracy which is by no means necessarily either Unionist or national, but something quite new and very dangerous. Some big employers, like Lord Lever-hulme, the Colmans and the big chocolate and cocoa. firms, have seen the wisdom of giving their workmen an active interest in the firms's fortunes. Others have sought to defend themselves by
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.