On Saturday, Mr. Morley made a very long and elaborate
speech to a great gathering of his constituents in the New- castle Town-hall. The speech was oratorically an able one, but Mr. Morley said absolutely nothing in answer to the Unionist arguments. It was easy enough to show that a great many irrelevant and tiresome speeches had been made, —that is a necessary result of Government by a deliberative assembly—and to make sharp points about George Washing- ton's never speaking for more than ten minutes; but this is no defence of the Government's action in giving but a day's notice of their change of front in regard to Clause 9, and still less is it a defence of the proposal that we should not govern Ire- land, but that Ireland should send representatives to govern us. Mr. Morley ended his speech by praising the Irish Members for their patience in sitting night after night, "listening to arguments all of which assumed, as their very foundation, that the Irish Legislature would be a pack of rogues and lunatics, of knaves and fools; and that in that they represent the Irish character and Irish intentions and aspirations." Mr. Morley characteristically forgot to praise the English Members for their patience in listening to speeches which assume that they, like their forefathers, are a set of mean- spirited and corrupt tyrants,—a "base, bloody, and brutal" race, delightirg in wrong and oppression.
