A hundred years ago
From the 'Spectator.' 5 June /869—Lord Elcho took up his true position as a Tory,—though he persists in calling himself independent,—in seconding the motion to reject the Irish Church Bill. His speech was even poorer than Mr. Holt's. He put the old taunt as to Mr. Bright's influence on the Government in a new form. Mr. Gladstone, he said, doubtless commanded the quarter-deck of the vessel of State with a most powerful and eloquent trumpet; but these are the days of steam, and the real commander is in the engine-room, where Mr. Bright pre- sides. Varying the simile, he said Mr. Glad- stone used the bird-call, but Cardinal Cullen and Mr. Bright held the strings and secured the birds, and so forth. Lord Elcho is always ready at popular illustrations of a cheery but uninstructive character. When he concluded by saying that if he had a hundred tongues he would, in the name of religious liberty, say "No" a hundred times to the third reading of the Bill, the dismay with which the mere hypothesis of multiplying Lord Elcho's chat- tering power by a hundred, filled the House was pathetic. Lord Elcho cannot be earnest. When he tries to be so, he only succeeds in exaggerating his own very harmless political vanity,—as in this feeble attempt, for instance, to express abhorrence of the Bill by conceiving himself with a hundred tongues saying 'no' a hundred times (10,000 times in all).
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