Mr. Morley made a speech at Rochdale on Wednesday, a
good deal of which was occupied with eloquent and just praise of Mr. Cobden, Mr. Bright, and Mr. Sharman Crawford, the latter one of the earliest advocates of agrarian reform in Ireland. The speaker was a little hampered, however, by Mr. Bright's opposition to Home-rule, and when he got out of his dilemma by saying that he had not had the training of great official responsibility, he must have felt that he was saying a weak thing. When, by-and-by, he arrived at the inevitable subject of Ireland, Mr. Morley was unusually feeble, he actually defending Mr. Parnell's alternative scheme of land- tenure by saying it was Mr. Parnell's, and alleging that Mr. Parnell had a habit of asking to-day what he obtained the day after to-morrow. That is pleading the principle of authority with a vengeance. Will all the resident landlords of Ireland be retained by Mr. Morley because Mr. Parnell asked on Monday that they should not be "exterminated "P He was very bitter against the Land-Purchase Bill ; but his one reasonable argument was, that to make all grants for local purposes liable for debts incurred by one-fourth of the people was unfair. He admitted, however, the benefit promised by the Bill to that class, declaring that it constituted them "a privileged class with immense advantages." That is true enough; but it is a privileged class capable of extension, if it keeps its promises, into an entire community. For the rest, Mr. Morley's arguments really resolve themselves into one, sound enough if Home-rule is sound, that tenure is specially a problem to be solved in accordance with national feeling.
