About two o’clock in the day, Mr Alf did make a speech,—­and a very good speech it was, if correctly reported in the ‘Evening Pulpit.’  Mr Alf was a clever man, ready at all points, with all his powers immediately at command, and, no doubt, he did make a good speech.  But in this speech, in which we may presume that it would be his intention to convince the electors that they ought to return him to Parliament, because, of the two candidates, he was the fittest to represent their views, he did not say a word as to his own political ideas, not, indeed, a word that could be accepted as manifesting his own fitness for the place which it was his ambition to fill.  He contented himself with endeavouring to show that the other man was...