Sir William Harcourt made a most entertaining as well as
instructive speech at Birmingham on Tuesday, which he began by complimenting Birmingham on being selected rather specially by the Conservatives as the centre of their superstitious fears. Conservatives lived on the manufac- ture of bogeys. Russia is for the present their foreign bogey, as France used to be. But Birmingham has a monopoly of their domestic bogeys. For a long time their great bogey was the senior Member for Birmingham,—Mr. Bright. But now "Mr. Bright had been deposed from the high rank of a destruc- tive spirit to the inferior rank of a guardian angel, and by a sort of apostolic succession, Mr. Chamberlain has been conse- crated the archbogey of Toryism by the terror of whose name Tory mothers keep their infants in order." However, Sir William Harcourt, though a moderate Liberal himself, had not been able to discover Mr. Chamberlain's cloven-foot. Possibly he was not quite sound on the Thirty-nine Articles, "but that is only because I have not yet had time fully to explain them to him." Nevertheless, he was the typically diabolic politician, for the Tories. We will suggest a reason for the superstition of the Tories about Birmingham. Birmingham, iu some sense, carried the great Reform Act of 1832 by its great popular demonstration. Birmingham has returned three Liberals, even in the teeth of a great reaction, and with a minority seat for the minority to win, if there were any worth counting. Bir- mingham has no Jingoes. Therefore, the most " advanced " of the Members for Birmingham is encircled by Tories with the aureole of a sort of diabolic distinction.
