The Express.
London, England, 1868-10-15 00:00:00

EVERY EVENING.

LONDON, THURSDAY, OCT. 15.

MR. GLADSTONE AT LIVERPOOL.

Is the speech which Mr. GLADSTONE made last
night at Liverpool, as in that which he delivered
earlier in the week at Warrington, he has wisely
subordinated the arts of the orator to the claims
of the party leader. He tells not merely a thrice-
told story, but a story which has been told ten times
and even a hundred times before. He traverses a
road over which countless feet have paved before
his ; and he can point out nothing which has not
been indicated over and over again. Out of his
treasure he brings forth not things new and old,
but old things exclusively. The history of the
Reform Bill of 1867, of the crude attempts at le-
gislation which preceded it, and of its
successive metamorphoses, cannot receive now
light even from Mr. GLADSTONE'S ingenuity.
die ten essential changes urged by him-
self and his friends, and with one excep-
tion carried ; the five vital principles insisted
on by Mr. DISRAELI, and nearly all of them dis-
carded by the House of Commons ; the compound
householder and the lodger, and other notabilities
of the past twelvemonths, are all of them old
friends whom it is impossible to present with a
new face. Mr. Geentrrorm's copiousness can
add nothing to a discussion which has been ex-
hausted; even his subtle' y can scarcely refine
upon it ; it requires all his eloquence to make the
old tale endurable. At the same time, Mr. GLAD-
irrosz is perfectly right in the course which he
is adopting. The Government have claimed the
confidence of tl e new constituencies as the authors
of the Reform Act of 1867. They protest
that they have shown trust in the people
and they call upon the people to exhibit a re-
ciprocal confidence in them. Mr. GLADSTONE is
bound to meet and answer this pretension. He
challenges the Government's title to the confidence
of the country ; he proves that they have been
Reformers in spite of themselves ; that, after
an honest attempt openly to resist the
reduction of the franchise, they tried
to withhold in fact what they affected
to concede in name ; and that only when they had
been defeated in both these attempts did they
make a virtue of necessity and give that which
would otherwise have been taken in spite of them.
He proves that the Reform Bill as it now stands
is in all that makes it valuable the work of the
opposition, and that only in what is objection-
able, in the rate-paying provisions and in the
minority clause, which he describes as a
common nuisance, is it duo to the Govern-
ment, or their allies on either side of the House.
It was necessary that all these things ahould be
put on record, and brought again clearly and pro-
minently before the public mind and conscience.
It is part of the came against the good faith and
capacity of the Ministry. It is one of the issues on
which the election will turn, and which will
decide the national vote of want of
confidence which will itself precede, per-
- 8 by but a few weeks, the Rarlia-
hak. -8/ declaration that will put an• inglorious
waiter, disreputable life of the Conservative
end to the Still, the old story is an old story.
Government. -ems. Mr. GLADSTONE cannot
Pacts are inonoto.. 'ho mere sake of gratifying
invent new ones for t. :9 critics, or giving them
an audience, or pleasing h. ' lilt. In this respeot,
also something new to talk au. t an oratorical
and in this only, lie labours a. •r. DISRAELI,
disadvantage as compared with X_ ,may es
wuoso facts came at his cull as r.. emu,
epigrams and metaphors ; with the new . ..v
too, there is generally some astounding theog,
which furnishes a day's wonder and laughter, sad

TH
then gives way to a theory of an e: its
character, supported by a perfectly& P$ of
facts, at which people laugh and wo agisin.
As of old every road led to Rome, 110 ktsent
every topic of political discussiotioense to by
some highway or byway to Irelaild. In the feel-
ing of the Irish in America, as described in
Mr. Maori itt's book; in the brutal and cowardly
murder of Mr. D'AIVY M ITU ; in the
suspension, time after time, of the Habeas
Corpus Act in Ireland, Mr. °LAWTON'S
finds grounds, we will not say of boar, but of pru-
dence, reinforcing the nobler impulses whioh bid
us to do justice to the sister island. The argu-
ments are old, but they are not older than the fade
on which they rest. They have been iterstal and
re-iterated, but they must be 'vested until they
are taken to heart and brought into practice.
The deliberate oratorical weakness of Mr. GL&D-
-r=7l:s electioneering speeches is their moral and
political strength.