The speech delivered by Mr. Cowen at Newcastle on Saturday
last, and published in Monday's Times, has been for the Con- servatives the great event of the week, and one over which their jubilation has been almost hysterical. It is to be scattered broadcast in scores of thousands, and the Conservative journals have been giving thanks day after day that a champion equal to their emergency has been raised up for them, at last. We have said enough of the general character of the speech, and the extraordinarily misleading nature of some of its state- ments of fact, elsewhere, but may add here that whatever may be its argumentative value, that value is very mach diminished by the remarkable conversion of the speaker from views of a totally opposite tendency within a very few years. In 1874, Mr. Cowen was for contracting our Colonial empire, for letting the larger Colonies cut the cable as soon as ever they could be got to think independence desirable, and for strict non-intervention abroad. He even advocated, at that time, the giving - up of Gibraltar. As late as 1877, he gave in his adhesion afresh to the "hard and unheroic" principle of non-intervention, as the Northern Echo quotes his language ; and even disapproved of the interference on behalf of the Bulgarians,—not because he was a friend of Turkey, but because he disapproved at that time of all inter- ference in the affairs of other nations. He now defends the guarantee of Turkey in Asia against Russia, and the Afghan invasion. Mr. Cowen may have been wrong then, and right now; but we can hardly attach much value to the judgment of a politician who has completely boxed the compass in two or three years. If an ironical answer to the prayer E.coriare aliquis were ever granted, surely it is granted in this bestowal on the Tories of such a champion as Mr. Cowen.
