Lord Morley’s “Stupid Jests.”

THE Statesman characterises Lord Morley’s description of members of the Civil Service as Tchnovniks as “stupid jests.” The Statesman is at liberty to disfigure its pages by the use of unmannerly epithets with reference to a man who has done more for Liberalism—which, we believe, is the creed which the Statesman still professes—than any other living Englishman. But it cannot make a thing what it is not. There is nothing the passage in which the expression occurs to show that Lord Morley was not in earnest. He clearly said what he believed, neither more nor less, and the world will judge of the remark, as it must judge of all remarks coming from such a man, and not according to the valuation of it by one whose one business in life is to worship men on the spot.