The Liberal party has real reason to complain of the
present condition of its London reports of political speeches. On Monday, Mr. Grant Duff delivered, at Northallerton, a most able and effec- tive reply to Mr. Cowen's recent speech, to some points of which we have drawn attention in another column. The speech was one of some authority, for Mr. Grant Duff was Under-Secretary for India during Mr. Gladstone's Administration, and knows more of foreign politics than almost any Member of the House of Commons. It was full of accurate knowledge, full of point, full of significance ; its temper was admirable, and many of its illustra- tions brilliant and amusing. No one of any party could call it any- thing but respectful to Mr. Cowen. No one of any party could call it anything short of a most valuable and striking contribution to the foreign politics of the day. It occupies more than five columns • of the Leeds Mercury of Tuesday, and not a sentence in the whole is verbose, or even dry. Yet the Times, which reported Mr. Cowen at full length, gave us no report of it at all ; and the Daily News gave it about a quarter of a column, from which no one could have guessed that it was a speech of the slightest force or weight. The provinces know what the ablest Liberals have to say on the controversies of the day, but London, un- less the voice be Mr. Gladstone's, or Lord Hartington's, or Sir William Harcourt's, does not. No wonder that London con- stituencies turn Jingo. They are supplied with far more materials for Jingoism than for any rational view.
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