Mr. F. Peel at Bury made one of his wonderfully
dull speeches to an apparently grateful audience on Wednesday evening. He explained what the Government had done and what it had not done, and dilated on the financial marvels of the American war, prefacing this part of his speech by an imaginative touch he had evidently treasured up with much care. He had found, he said, in an old writer of the sixteenth century, the expres- sion "the America of truth" in the sense of " unexplored truth ; " but if, said Mr. F. Peel, there could be " an America of fiction," it would not be so amazing as the actual " America of truth " at the present day,—after which lively remark he launched into the American debt, and solidified. What Mr. Frederick Peel's one " point" meant, perhaps, as Dr. Johnson says " no man shall ever know." That he thought he saw how a point could be made out of " the America of truth " and " the America of fiction," before he began to speak, is very likely, but he should have got the speech by heart. His presence of mind evidently failed him when he came to the one remark with an edge to it—not unnaturally.
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