Mr. W. H. Smith made a short speech at Henley
on Wed- nesday, in which he indulged in the vain aspiration that Members of the House of Commons would not insist on using the same arguments over and over again, very seldom repeating these arguments even in so good a form as that in which they had at first been produced. We heartily sympathise with the First Lord of the Treasury, and with all who have to listen to this monotonous reiteration, for it is like listening to all the clocks in a clocky neighbourhood as they reiterate the announcement of the same hour ; but is it not part of the duty of a House of Representatives to give some impression to the country of the tenacity with which particular arguments take hold of commonplace minds P We hardly know whether an argument has really penetrated the constituencies or not, till we have heard it repeated in fifty different forms by different men, and have noticed whether or not the very worst form in which it is echoed is one that shows its impressiveness for a slow, awkward, and groping sort of mind. If it does, that is probably, to the Parliamentary statesmen, the most useful reiteration it has received.
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