Mr. J. Morley is always effective ; and on Tuesday,
at Cam- bridge, he was more effective than usual. He laughed at the Tory policy of " inquiry " into everything, asked if the
country had not a right to answers, instead of questions, from its Government, and remarked that one special inquiry—the inquiry into the condition of India advo- cated by Lord R. Clinrchdl—was in the ligheat degree dangerous. The whole apparatus of society in India was to be made a mark for a Parliamentary Committee to shoot at. lie summed up the present policy in Ireland as "a policy of soft words and hard cash ;" and though himself inclined to grant full self-government to Ireland, would never retract his opinion that the "independence of the island would be a disaster for herself and a dishonour for England." He did not believe that the Conservatives would bring in a sincere County Government Bill, a Bill based frankly on election ; and declared himself strongly in favour of handing over the liquor question to be regulated by the County Councils. Mr. Morley concluded with a fine peroration, in which he said that some found in philanthropy the mainspring of political interest, and others regarded" polities rather as the art of creating a powerful and beneficent State ;" but he would remind both that politics was no stage-play, and that under all the tedium of the detail was the ennobling " con- viction that they were doing something to give new authority, new strength, to a country unrivalled in the magnitude of its enterprises and the humanity of its purposes."
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