3 OCTOBER 1891, Page 3

Sir William Harcourt is always an advocate, and usually

-thinks, when speaking, that he is addressing a jury or a com- mittee, with whom every statement tells if it is not exposed

before the verdict is given. Under this impression, he at Derby made a great point by quoting a rather cynical article by Mr. Edward Dicey in the Nineteenth Century, advising Unionists to preserve the Union and keep out Mr. Gladstone by outbidding the Radicals on the rest of their programme.

Sir W. Harcourt denounced this in fair though inflated rhetoric, and in order to bring his accusation more directly home to Unionists, attributed the article to Professor Albert Dicey, a leading Unionist. As he knows the difference between the brothers perfectly well, the artifice was most unworthy, and was promptly exposed by both, whereupon Sir William retorted in a letter of the "God Almighty to a blakkbeetle " -style, confessing that he had a "dim idea" of two Diceys, but fancied that the Professor—who at a meeting in support of Lord Hartington had called Mr. Gladstone -" Old Timbertoes "—had written the article. The Professor had, of course, given no such foolish nickname. What 'he had done, as he explained on Friday, was to object to the • Gladstonian trick of making the popular feeling for the -" Grand Old Man" serve as a political argument. It re- minded him, he said, of the one-legged candidate for the Presidency, whose advice was :—

-"Then you can call me Timbertoes,' thet's wut the people likes, Sutthen combinin' morril truth with phrases sech ez strikes. 'Old Timbertoes' you see's a creed it's safe to be quite bold on ; There's nothing in 't the other side can anyways get hold on."

'The sarcasm was telling, and was required. It is a regular trick of the Gladstonians, and especially of those who in their 'hearts despise him for his Conservative leanings and faith in 'Christianity, to extort cheers and a hearing for their own ideas by adulation of their leader's personality. Who is so .glorious as Gladstone ?' they say, and therefore two plus two make five.