Mr. J. Morley has commenced the campaign of the Recess
from the Liberal side, but the speech he delivered at Cam- bridge on Monday is not very satisfying. He satirised the Liberal Unionists, and prophesied their extinction, and denied the success of the Government in foreign policy and in Ireland. By remaining in Egypt they made England vulner- able, and by favouring the Triple Alliance they developed counter alliances, which would ultimately be dangerous to peace and to Great Britain. Their concession of County Councils to Ireland would only produce incessant collisions between those Councils and the non-Nationalist supervising Board in Dublin, and therefore increase the Irish work in Parliament, — a criticism probably correct. He denied strongly that the Home-rule programme had been rele- gated to a subordinate position, and declared that, failing it, Parliament would be occupied for the next ten years with petty Irish affairs. Nevertheless, lie devoted much of his speech to the Labour Question, denouncing once more the Eight-Hours Bill as a " ramrod thrust into the delicate and complex machinery of British industry," but holding out grand hopes that the District Councils would remedy labourers' grievances, improve cottages, and cover fields now abandoned to thistles with " golden grain." The "vivification of villages" is obviously to be the next "cry."
