It seems to be almost certain that Sir William Harcourt
has really become an enthusiastic philanthropist at this late stage of his political life. It is almost as bewildering as it was to the visitor at one of the provincial exhibitions, who found a picture of the maniac coming naked and in chains from the tombs, catalogued as a likeness of Lord John Russell, and who remarked, with a good deal of simple surprise, " H'm, Lord John Russell. Well, I should never have thought it; I should never have thought it." So the transformation of Sir William Harcourt,—a shrew& and rather cynical man of the world, who used to de- light in nothing more than in knocking the bottom out of amiable delusions,—into an enthusiastic assailant of the publicans, is even more bewildering, as it cannot be explained away on any assumption of erroneous classification. There can be no mistake about it. Sir William Harcourt really believes, and says, that "you can give the people power, by- Act of Parliament, to make themselves sober," which is one of the most wonderful of assertions, though it is obvious that his belief is genuine. That the people have a good deal of power to make themselves sober, without any Act of Parlia- ment, we have no doubt, though Sir William Harcourt hardly seems to think that they could make themselves sober without the help of an Act of Parliament. But we cannot imagine- how the power to suppress a certain number of public-houses, leaving all the others all the more profitable, should contribute- to make men any better able to be sober than they were before, though it will certainly help them to be quieter and to keep the noises of drinkers and revellers at a distance. Sir William Harcourt's speeches at Derby, however, show a genuine ecstasy of moral self•approbation on this subject which is at once curious and pathetic.
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