On Friday week Mr. Morley, in an elaborately impassioned speech,
arraigned the Sondanese policy of the Government, and drew a gloomy picture of the results of depending upon mercenary troops and of extending the area of the Empire that could only be governed by despotic rule. "In my view," ended Mr. Morley, "the policy of the Soudan advance has been an error from the first, and is now drawing us on rapidly to new responsibilities, new entanglements, and fresh outlay." That was Mr. Morley's deliberate conclusion, and in regard to it we should like to ask him one question. With these views, how was it that he continued to occupy a chief place in a Ministry which not only remained in Egypt, but actually claimed the whole Soudan as lying within the Anglo-Egyptian sphere of influence, and by endorsing Sir Edward Grey's speech threatened war against any Power who should try to reach the Upper Nile before us ? That was the beginning of the Soudanese advance, and that was the time when Mr. Morley ought to have protested. To keep his protest in his pocket till he is out of office was either the height of political impotency or else unprincipled. But no man can justly accuse Mr. Morley of being unprincipled. In that matter he stands deservedly as high as any man in our public life. Mr. Morley may have had good reasons for not breaking up the late Ministry by insisting on his own policy in the Soudan, but having decided to acquiesce in the triumph of the other policy, he must abide by the consequences.
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