At Newcastle, on Monday, Mr. Joseph Cowen delivered his -apology
for the very eccentric course he has pursued in Parlia- ment, in an eloquent and laboured attack on the Government for everything they have done. The principle of the closure of .debate, he said, " was sophistical and unfair,—it fettered the whole, for fear of the few ;" but he did not explain how, the Liberal view of the matter being that the principle of the closure of debate fetters the few for the sake of the whole. Under the New Rules, says Mr. Cowen, the occupation of the independent Member will be gone. And those whom the closure of debate is to silence in Parliament, the influence of the caucus will paralyse in the constituencies. "He did not believe in this immoral and emasculating Parliamentary oppor- tunism." He did look forward to the recovery of freedom of debate, as soon as the Conservatives should come back to power. He then went on to inveigh against both the repressive measures which have been aimed against the criminal out- rages in Ireland, as well that which expired last September as that now in force. He advocated buying out the land- lords of Ireland, and took the extreme Irish view of the prac- tical inadequacy of the Land Act. He denounced our occu- pation of Egypt as in plain contradiction, to his mind, of that Liberal policy for the East which Liberals had urged against Lord Beaconsfield,—but which, as Mr. Cowen forgot to say, he himself at that time, being a partisan of Lord Beacons- field's, vehemently condemned,—and predicted that the Liberal policy would end in the annexation of Egypt, and the final destruction of Egyptian nationality. Mr. Cowen, in short, is nothing, if not anti-Liberal. He may be called either a Tory Irreooncilable, or an Irreconcilable Tory. He inveighs against the Liberal policy as an Irreconcilable would inveigh against it, where he can find a party, like the Irish party, to support him. And where he cannot, he inveighs against it as the Tories inveigh against it. But in all things alike, he draws his sword upon the Liberals.
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