Mr. John Morley made on Wednesday, at a House dinner
of the National Liberal Club, one of the speeches by which he is honourably distinguished from Sir William Harcourt. Not that it was at all fair to the Government, but that it did at least make a serious effort to treat with impartiality the proposal which Lord Salisbury opened to the Conservative Party on Thursday, we mean the proposal that a Bill which has been carried as far as the Coinmittee stage can, by special resolution, be revived in the following Session at the point at which it had arrived in the previous Session. This is so intrinsically reasonable a proposal, that Mr. Morley could not deny that there is a very great deal to be said for it, only he argued that it would need careful debating, and could not properly be thrust down the throats of the House of Commons in a hurry. From Mr. Morley's point of view, this was a. reasonable and moderate attitude to assume. Of coarse, he added much which we cannot regard as either reasonable or moderate, especially as to the bungling of the Government in introducing the licensing proposals, and as to the spotless innocence of the Opposition in relation to obstruction. According to Mr. Morley, whiter souls than those of the Opposition leaders, in reference to obstruction, could not any- where be found. They glisten, in fact, with a sort of Celestial dew of political magnanimity.
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