At Hull on Wednesday Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman made what we
can only describe as an amazing speech. "Our party," he told his audience, "is not an inert and mechanical party ; it is a party which moves and thinks, and therefore must speak its mind." He next made a panegyric upon Home-rule such as has not been heard from the lips of any Liberal leader for the last three or four years, and asked in impassioned terms: "Why, gentlemen, how then can we, as long as we use the name of Liberal—how can we abandon, as they invite us to do, our Irish policy ? We will remain true to
the Irish people as long as the Irish people are true to them- selves. Twice we have essayed to embody this policy in a statute, and twice we have been foiled." What was the practical conclusion of this outburst ? That the Liberal party would stick to Home-rule through good report and through evil, and that they would have the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill? Not a bit of it. Instead, Sir Henry Campbell. Bannerman absolutely refused to pledge himself to make Home-rule the first and chief charge on the Liberal party. "Why, ladies and gentlemen. I repudiate the necessity, the expediency, aye, and the possibility, of any such promise. Putting aside the question of wise or unwise, I declare it to be impossible." The speech, as a whole, has proved a great disappointment to those who thought that Sir Henry was really going to lead his party and not merely mark time and talk platitudes.
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