l denials which are generally
regarded as the best testimony to the truth of the report denied.

[Sidenote: Mr. Morley.]

If one were on the look-out for dramatic and instructive contrast in the
House of Commons, one could not do better than study Mr. Morley and Mr.
Chamberlain for a week. Mr. Chamberlain--glib, shallow, self-possessed,
well-trained by years of public life--debates admirably. Nobody can deny
that--not even those who, like myself, find his speaking exasperatingly
empty and superficial and foolish. He is master of all his resources;
scarcely ever pauses for a word, and when he is interrupted, can parry
the stroke with a return blow of lightning-like rapidity. But when he
sits down, is there any human being that feels a bit the wiser or the
better for what he has said? And who can get over the idea that it has
all been a bit of clever special pleading--such as one could hear in
half-a-dozen courts of law any day of the week? And, finally, who is
there that can help feeling throughout all the speech that this is a
selfish nature--full of venom, ambition, and passion--seeing in
political conflict not great principles to advance--holy causes to
defend--happiness to extend--but so many enemies' faces to grind to
dust?

Mr. Morley is a fine platform speaker, but as yet he is not nearly as
good a debater as Mr. Chamberlain. He stumbles, hesitates, finds it hard
often to get the exact word he wants. And yet who cannot listen to him
for ten minutes without a sense of a great mind--and what to me is
better, a fine character behind it all? This man has thought
out--possibly in travail of spirit--and his creed--though it may not be
the exultant cheerfulness of natures richer in muscle than in
thought--is one for which he will fight and sacrifice, and not yield. In
short, the thinness of Mr. Chamberlain--the depths of Mr. Morley--these
are the things which one will learn from hearing them speak even once.

I have said that Mr. Morley is not as good a debater as Mr. Chamberlain;
but if Mr. Chamberlain be wise, he will call his watch-dogs off Mr.
Morley, for he is being badgered into an excellent debater. Every night
he improves in his answers to questions. Tersely, frigidly--though
there is the undercurrent of scorn and sacred passion in most of what he
says--Mr. Morley meets the taunts and charges of the Russells, and the
Macartneys, and the Carsons, and never yet has he been beaten in one of
those hand-to-hand fi