THE LIBERAL PARTY IN ENGLAND.

Press, Volume LVI, Issue 10265, 7 February 1899, Page 5

THE LIBERAL PARTY IN ENGLAND.

"A Glasgow gentleman has received the following caustic letter from the Duke of Argyll," says a London contemporary, "in reply to a query whether there was any hope of a reconstructed Liberal party now that Sir William Harcourt had resigned:—'lnverary, Argyllshire, 16th December, 1898. — Sir,—You put questions to mc which it would take pages to answer, and I have no time for that. I may say, however, that you give the title of 'the Liberal party' to men who do not and never did represent it. You forget that all the best men of the Liberal party, with whom I served for 30 years, revolted from Mr Gladstone's new Irish policy of disintegration. Nothing but the debris was left him. I knew them all personally, and can estimate their value pretty well. Lord Hartington, Mr Chamberlain, Mr Go_chen, John Bright, Sir H. James, Lord Selborne —these, and a few others, were the very brains and backbone of the Liberal party. Those who, with a sort of canine fidelity, stuck to a personal leader, whatever he might do, were all comparatively inferior mon. Yet you call those derelicts 'the Liberal party,' on what theory of party con tinuity I do not know. It must be an absurd one. The Liberal party is better represented on the present Treasury benches than it has over beeai before in my time. Those who are now splitting u~> into still smaller fragments are not the Liberal party. They have never been held together, by any intelligible policy or any principle capable of definition, and their fate now is the legitimate result of their unhappy origin.—Your obedient servant, Argyll." ,