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is recorded for all time. Surely the fact is undisputed in physical science that mere noise, no matter how deafening, does not erase printers' ink.

Then came the bolt from the blue. The Leader of the Opposition intervened, in justice to his Party and the recipients of Old Age Pensions. As apparently only a really strong man can afford to do in British public life, he called a spade a spade, and explained to his countrymen the exact connotation of the term "Mr. Alexander Ure."

It is the sequel which is really interesting. In the composition. of the present holder of the office of Lord Advocate oak and triple bronze occupy the place of the ordinary epidermis. Even through this the castigation got home. He has screamed lustily in his own fashion, and in his screaming he has resorted to braggadocio and cant and to further falsehood.

But he continues to hold the office of Lord Advocate.

In this fact lie the scandal and the peril of the situation. That Mr. Ure personally should not have scrupled to hold office after exposure need not, perhaps, astonish us. That the Prime Minister should-even at this time of party difficulty and impending disaster-have judged it seemly or right to retain him in his office is infinitely more surprising. We venture to think that the Mr. Asquith of four years ago would have flung such a colleague from him, and would have commanded such a controversialist to be for ever silent-since, in Mr. Ure's case, silence is a first postulate of veracity. But whoever it was who decided the question for Mr. Asquith, the decision was that the Lord Advocate was not to be deprived of his accoutrements and drummed out.

Having reached this decision, the Prime Minister is not to be blamed if he carried through the business consistently. A process of whitewashing was necessary. It was but partial-designed to obliterate only the more recent stain. But that was enough for Mr. Alexander Ure. There was first the carefully rehearsed scene in the House of Commons. The bombastic oration addressed from the dock to a noisy jury of partisans really needs no comment. The only explanation offered in it was merely an outline of the explanation which we shall notice later. But one may be pardoned a smile at the cheap claptrap of the

passage about "the day when it was open to a man to defend an attack upon his honour with his own right arm!" Poor Mr. Ure! In those bygone days men who indulged propensities like his were short-lived. Had the practice of duelling survived into September of this present year of grace we should have been spared these untruths of October. It is to be feared that more than one sword in the great house of Buccleuch would have leapt from its scabbard to seek out this same lawyer; and then-exit Mr. Ure! And yet, on second thoughts, no: this would not have been the course of events. Without the guarantee of bodily safety afforded by the usages of our times, such a man either would have stuck with some care to the truth; or if, as we believe, that be altogether impossible for him, would have made mad haste to tender an abject apology. There is something ridiculous and super-contemptible in this flapping of wings and crowing of defiance from the safe distance of over half a century! When Mr. Ure sat down the occupants of the Radical benches, having extended to Mr. Balfour all the discourtesies of debate, applauded the Prime Minister into the sharp inconsistency of finishing an unambiguous contradiction of Mr. Ure's misstatement with a panegyric on the delinquent. After which, if we remember aright, the pair embraced, or shook hands, or went through some limelight antic of the kind. Then, in the eloquent words of Mr. Runciman, "at the end of it all Mr. Ure emerged as he went into it one of the best type of Scottish gentlemen!" (Mr. Runciman has obviously been reading Mr. Crossland's dainty little work on Scotsmen.) The process of whitewashing was completed by the chorus of resolutions from the Radical organisations throughout the country-the violence of which will be charitably excused when it is remembered that Mr. Balfour had nipped in the bud a lie of uniquely high promise.

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Those who had not made themselves acquainted with the past of this "Scottish gentleman of the best type seem to have expected that after his thrilling experience he would seek a temporary withdrawal from public view-that, perhaps, for a week or two, he would cease to treat his high office as a sinecure. Such superficial people knew not their Ure ! A cessation of talk is with him impossible. In his vision of a future state, we

feel sure, eternal punishment takes the awful shape of confinement in a Trappist Monastery. Never has the Volcano been more active. Never has the lava been-well, let us say, more characteristic.

For one thing, he has unbosomed himself at Bathgate-not to mention other places, at some of which his reception was not so harmoniously sympathetic. Now Mr. Ure's attitude at Bathgate is not without parallel-in fiction. "I am not angry," observed Mr. Pecksniff, after he had painfully picked himself up from the floor, "I am hurt, Mr. Chuzzlewit-wounded in my feelings-but I am not angry, my good sir!" "I am not a resentful man," said the meek Mr. Ure; "I cherish no ill-will to any one!" But it is this egregious person's part in life to outstrip all his prototypes, and to hurl them from the familiar places. they have occupied in our daily life and thought. Wherefore it need not surprise us that on this occasion Mr. Ure out-Pecksniffed Mr. Pecksniff by declaring that he never until that moment realised the true meaning of the beatitude "Blessed are ye when men revile you and say all manner of evil against you, for my sake!" Could blasphemy go further? This freshly detected sinner posing as a Christian martyr, as having suffered for Religion's sake! Faugh!

It is superfluous to say that this (still) Right Honourable Gentleman has gone on to fresh falsehoods. It is beyond us to keep full tally of his output. Two intertwined gems deserve a passing notice. At Rochdale, in the House of Commons, at Erith, at Bathgate, he badgered his wits for some gloss on his plain statement about Old Age Pensions. What he had meant, it seems, was the proposition (itself replete with untruth) that if the Unionist Party returned to power they would be unable to pay the pensions "in the only way and by the only method that [sic] they had ever said that they would pay the pensions-he meant by Tariff Reform." From this he passed to the falsehoods (1) that "he had forced from Mr. Balfour publicly that he [Mr. Ure] was right in his facts and figures, sound in the conclusions he had reached, and that the pensions never would have been paid if he [Mr. Balfour] and his friends had clung to Tariff Reform "; and (2) that Mr. Ure's "end, his only end had been gained—Tariff Reform as a means of raising revenue was finally abandoned."

These passages are quoted from the report of the Bathgate speech. The speaker may again complain, if that should suit him, of the reporters' work. But if, as we do not doubt, he is correctly reported, we leave him and the passages we have quoted with the too obvious comment that they are as unintelligible as they are untrue.

Meanwhile, we repeat, the danger and the scandal is that Mr. Ure still retains his office. To the Lord Advocate is committed the absolute control of criminal prosecution in Scotland; and he is the fountain of patronage regards legal appointments in that country. Can it be maintained that he is a fitting person to discharge these delicate duties?

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The leader of his Party, however, has decreed that Mr. Ure must be retained. It is obvious that, so long as this Scottish gentleman of the best type continues in the field, political controversy must remain at a much lower and more squalid level than that at which he found it.

But, after all, there has been a notable change. One of the unchallenged truths of the whole episode is that complete success has attended Mr. Balfour's ideally perfect performance of his uncongenial task. Mr. Alexander Ure, as a politician, is now "known to the police." When a person attains to that distinction his powers for evil are enormously curtailed. Hereafter, of course, as heretofore, there will be tumultuous applause at this orator's meetings; but in the future every man, whether ally or opponent, from Land's End to John o'Groat's, will, even in spite of his wishes, receive all he says with tacit incredulity and distrust. The knowledge of his unreliability has been brought right into every mind in the land.

He has been publicly compared by an eminent member of his own profession to Ananias. We may leave it at that.

SCOTSMAN.

GREATER BRITAIN

CANADIAN AFFAIRS

1

Ar the moment of writing, though the official papers have not yet been placed on the table, the Dominion Parliament is already discussing the all-important question of the Canadian Navy. In his speech on the Address the Leader of the Opposition carefully refrained from dealing with naval affairs, confining his criticism of the Ministerial policy to (1) the rapid growth of expenditure in recent years, (2) the delay in the completion of the Government portions of the new transcontinental railway, and (3) the difficulties which may arise as a result of the ratification of the commercial treaty between Canada and France. For the time being Mr. R. L. Borden is somewhat embarrassed by the speeches of Mr. F. D. Monk, the Conservative Leader in the Province of Quebec, who has been telling the French-Canadians that Canada does not require a fleet to protect her trade, because in time of war she would be able to send out her produce and bring in the products she requires through American seaports. There is no denying that this version of the Monroe Doctrine fallacy is generally accepted in the country districts of the French-Canadian province. Both Mr. Henri Bourassa, who now occupies a position almost as strong as that of the late Honoré Mercier in the affections of the habitant, and his brilliant young lieutenant, Mr. Lavergne, have always taken this view of the situation. Mr. Bourassa is the heirapparent to Sir Wilfrid Laurier's influence in Quebec, and, however one deplores his inability to accept the Imperial ideals of his English-speaking compatriots, Canada could not dispense with his vivid and virile personality. The time will come when he will purge Canadian public life of the corruption and graft which have become organised during the Laurier régime, and constitute a

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