Sir Charles Dilke delivered a most striking speech on Mon-
day to his Chelsea constituents, which dealt chiefly with the foreign policy of the Government,—a section of his speech, how- ever, with which we have sufficiently dealt in another column. Here we may add that in referring to the Parliamentary use- fulness of his colleague Mr. Firth, he invented a very happy nickname for the remarkable monument at Temple Bar, calling it "the ghost of the mock-turtle ;" and that in denying, so far as he was concerned, all knowledge of any intention of the Government to propose what is called the cloture,—the power to close a discus- sion by a vote,—as a remedy for obstruction, he reminded his hearers that the cleiture, or something closely resembling it, has been adopted in France, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Prussia, Germany, and Portugal, and in a number of English- speaking colonies and States. Norway, though it has not the eltiture, has the power of closing any individual Member's mouth in any discussion ; and in America, there exists a right to carry a form of "the previous question," which is even more effective. On the Irish question, while heartily supporting the resolve of the Government to accompany repressive measures by a solid land reform, Sir Charles Dilke expressed his un- affected horror of the terrorism now in vogue in Ireland. The speech was one of the highest possible mark, and not a sentence of it redundant.
