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 not fit;--and that he and his friends, though solicitous of proving to the electors that Mr. Melmotte was about the most unfit man in the world, had been guilty of nothing shabby in their manner of doing so. "Mr. Melmotte," he said, "comes before you as a Conservative, and has told us, by the mouths of his friends,--for he has not favoured us with many words of his own,--that he is supported by the whole Conservative party. That party is not my party, but I respect it. Where, however, are these Conservative supporters? We have heard, till we are sick of it, of the banquet which Mr. Melmotte gave yesterday. I am told that very few of those whom he calls his Conservative friends could be induced to attend that banquet. It is equally notorious that the leading merchants of the City refused to grace the table of this great commercial prince. 
At about two o'clock, Mr. Alf did make a speech - and a very good speech it was, if correctly reported in the Evening Pulpit. But in this speech he did not say a word about his own political ideas, nor even about his own fitness to be a Member of Parliament. Instead, he tried to show that the other man was not fit; and that he and his friends, in wishing to prove Mr. Melmotte's unfitness, had been guilty of nothing shabby.
"Mr. Melmotte," he said, "comes before you as a Conservative, and has told us that he is supported by the whole Conservative party. Where, however, are these Conservative supporters? We have heard, till we are sick of it, of the banquet which Mr. Melmotte gave yesterday. I am told that very few of his Conservative friends could be induced to attend that banquet. The leading merchants of the City refused to grace his table. 