Mr. Goschen grows. We cannot, in the limited space at
our command, give even the chief points of his speeches this week at Darlington, Newcastle, and Edinburgh ; but this we note, that they have shown in him a great popular power for dealing, and dealing not only good-humouredly, but often with great point, with hostile comment of no very scrupulous kind, and that he sticks to his brief, in spite of all interruption, and positively compels his audience to grasp his argument. He is a great political educator, and no speeches recently have equalled his in the closeness of their logic and the power of his retorts. He compelled the Newcastle people to see that some large scheme for the settlement of the Irish land question is certainly not dead, but is at most in a condition of suspended animation ; and at Edinburgh he has made a very great impression, by showing the absolute impossibility of so distinguishing Irish, Scotch, and English affairs as to permit of separate Legislatures of anything like the Parliamentary type. He took, for instance, the abolition of University tests which he advocated against Mr. Gladstone, and asked the audience whether that was an exclusively English question, pointing out, moreover, that if it had been, the aboli- tion of those tests in the English Universities would have been postponed long beyond the time at which it was actually carried. It was carried by Scotch votes. Mr. Goschen's popular speeches have indeed been models of close, lucid, and familiar argument.
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