But on whichever side the orator takes his stand, what an ancient ...

But on whichever side the orator takes his stand, what an ancient would have called the Common Places are the same: justice and freedom, welfare and security, thegreatness of the Empire, its dangers, its moral obligations; from which might be deduced, as occasion served, the duty of giving votes to all men over twenty-one, and of not giving votes to women at all; of staying in Egypt and abandoning the Sudan; the capitulation to the Boers in1881 and the defiance of Russia in 1885; Establishment in England and Disestablishment in Wales. In issuing from the Curia to the Forum,

eloquence did not at once

put off her senatorial robes, and the speakers of the eighties, though none could recapture the enchantment of Midlothian, could always rise, were expected by their tense and patient audiences to rise above the sentiment and invective which is the staple of party speaking, to the reasoned articulation of great principles, which is the essence of political oratory.

A sound body of political philosophy might still be extracted from the rich information of Duke and the fine reasoning of Courtney, the robust indiscretions of Salisbury, the close arguement of Goschen, and Hartington's grand good sense. We are far from Limehouse still.

But

Lord Randolph had pointed the way.

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