Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/187

 all acquainted, return professing to be cured for life of republican ideals. On the contrary, he came back favorably impressed with the simplicity of American official life, and confirmed generally in his democratic sympathies.

In 1869, at a by-election, Mr. Morley contested his native Blackburn in the Radical interest, but without success. The "Conservative working-man" was against him. In certain Lancashire constituencies it can no longer be doubted that this anomalous being exists, and exists in force. Conservatism implies that there is something to conserve; but in these Godforsaken regions you have the effect without the cause,—men guarding rigorously what they never possessed. It is as if a slave with freedom within his grasp should cling tenaciously to his chains. Howbeit, Mr. Morley made as stubborn a fight as he did at Westminster at the last general election, and showed himself as cogent with his tongue on the platform as with his pen in the closet. He is a most skilful and persuasive speaker, with hardly a trace of those oratorical defects which generally mar the public utterances of great authors. He knows the difference between the written and the spoken linguistic mould, and can deftly cast his thoughts in either. Dissenting, as he does, even from the most heterodox Dissenters, I have yet heard him speak with rare acceptance on a Liberation Society's platform to the pink and flower of English Nonconformity. Such a spectacle of mutual toleration is among the most hopeful signs of English public life. But it is at home in his literary workshop that the editor of "The Fortnightly" will be seen to most advantage. The appointments of Berkeley Lodge, Fut-