Mr. Morley spoke in the Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool, on Wednesday,
and reargued the Irish Question at considerable length, but without throwing any new light upon it. He said that Ireland fills the mind of Parliament to the exclusion of all other 'topics, and will fill it till Home-rule is granted ; and that Ireland chokes the time of Parliament with business, and will choke it till Home-rule is granted ; and then he advocated a form of Home-rule subject absolutely to the revision of the Parliament at Westminster, which will leave the mind of Par- liament still more burdened with Ireland than ever before, and the time of Parliament choked with three times as much Ireland as now. He argued from the funds which have come in to the Irish Tenants' Defence Association, that the policy of the Government is a failure. That would not be our inference, but rather that the Land question is really the root of the whole matter, which is just what Mr. Morley, at very great pains and very great length, denied. If the Land question were ever so finally settled, he says,—but he does not intend it to be settled without Irish Home-rale,—the Irish Home-rule question would be as lively as ever, and this he argues from the very inadequate prernisses that some of those tenants who have bought their land under the Ashbourne Act have also subscribed to the Defence Association, which they very likely may have felt compelled to do as a precautionary measure against boycotting, just because they had availed themselves of the Ashbourne Act.
