And then came the pathetic scene, in which again Mr. Bryce figured, and

which once more brought out the marvellous grasp, the tenacious and

inevitable memory of the splendid Old Man. The amendment of Lord Wolmer

was, declared Mr. Gladstone, against "the law of Parliament," and, by

way of emphasizing this point, he wanted to have a quotation made from

Sir Erskine May's Book on Parliament. But the eyesight of age is weak,

and there is in the House of Commons, until the gas is lit, something of

the dim, religious light of a cathedral, and, accordingly, Mr. Gladstone

had to rely on the younger eyes of Mr. Bryce. The scene which followed

might be described as out of order, for there were two members standing

at the same time. But the vast ascendancy of Mr. Gladstone over the

assembly--the profound reverence in which all, save the meanest, bow

before his genius, character, and age--enable him to do things not

permitted to common men. In the rapt and serious face, in the attentive

look, in the fingers beating the table as word followed word in

confirmation of this view--in the curious, almost weird and unusual

sight of two men standing side by side, Mr. Gladstone silent, Mr. Bryce

speaking--there was a scene, the impressiveness, poetry, and pathos of

which will never pass from the memory of those who saw it. And the

House--so quick, with all its passion, and fractiousness, and

meannesses, at grasping the significance of a great and solemn

moment--marked its sense of the scene by a stillness that was almost

audible--a hush that spoke aloud.

[Sidenote: And yet another.]

There was just one other incident in this marvellous little speech which

must be noted. I have remarked the ofttimes the voice of Mr. Gladstone

was so low, that it was with difficulty one could hear him. The reason

is curious, and is revealed in a little gesture that has only come in

recent years, and that has a melancholy interest. Often now, when he is

speaking, Mr. Gladstone puts his hand to his right ear, as men do who

are making a laborious effort to catch and concentrate sound. The cause

of this is that Mr. Gladstone's hearing has become defective, and he has

to adopt this little stratagem to make his own voice audible to himself.

You should see the Old Man with his hand to his ear, with the look of

gentle anxiety on his face, to understand all this little gesture

conveys; and how it exalts your sense of the mighty courage of this

great Old Man, who is able to rise thus superior to all obstacles, to

all foes, to all weaknesses of the flesh, all devices of the enemy.

[Sidenote: Mr. Balfour.]

Mr. Balfour, I have said more than once, does not display his talents

best in Opposition. In his desire to be effective, he strains a not very

strong voice until, it sounds almost like a shriek. I do not wish to be

unfair to Mr. Balfour. There is, as I have often said in these columns,

a certain distinction in all he does. I often think he is wanting in

that consideration and reverence for the mighty old gladiator whom it is

his duty to oppose; but for all this I make allowance, as it is his duty

to oppose Mr. Gladstone, and in doing that, he may sometimes appear

unintentionally irreverent. But the fact is, Mr. Balfour is thin,

narrow, and does not get at the reality of things. Many people say he is

very inferior to Mr. Chamberlain; but most assuredly I do not in the

least agree with this opinion. To me the difference between the two men

is the difference between a scholar and a counter-jumper--I mean a

counter-jumper of the Senate, and not of the shop. But though that is my

opinion, I cannot refrain from saying that Mr. Balfour contrasts very

unfavourably with Mr. Gladstone in this struggle of giants.

[Sidenote: An ugly moment.]

It was during the speech of Mr. Balfour that a little incident took

place, the full significance of which would probably not be grasped by

the non-Parliamentarian. Mr. Balfour was arguing that it was impossible

to properly discuss the amendment of Lord Wolmer until the House knew

whether or not the Irish members were going to be retained in the

Imperial Parliament. I do not know whether it was because there was

something provocative in the manner in which Mr. Balfour referred to

this subject, but it had the effect of rousing the once vulnerable, but

now admirably controlled temper, which has played such a part in Mr.

Gladstone's career. Rising with a certain deepened pallor, and with that

feverish rush in his voice which those who watch him know so well he

said that the Ministry meant to stick by the ninth clause, and would do

their very best to get it accepted by the House. Here was a most

portentous announcement--the portentousness of which the careful

observer could see at once, by the sudden stillness which fell upon the

House. Whenever a Minister, or even a politician of small importance who

is not a Minister, makes a statement full of portentous possibilities as

to the future, the House suddenly becomes still and tense, and you can

hear a pin drop. It is the prompt and sometimes almost irresistible

expression of the feeling that Destiny is throwing the die, and that you

have to watch the grim and fateful result.

[Sidenote: The Treasury Bench looks awkward.]

And if you looked on the Treasury Bench, you could see that the feeling

was not altogether comfortable. It was no secret that the ninth clause

was the one which offered to the Government the one perilous fence they

had still to take--that is to say, so far as their own followers were

concerned. Hitherto the attitude of the Government was quite unknown;

and, indeed, it was quite probable that the Government themselves had

not finally decided what their attitude should be. But when Mr.

Gladstone--pale, excited, and angry--jumped in with this outburst, it

seemed all at once as if the fateful and final word of Destiny had been

spoken, and as if the whole fate of Ireland, of Mr. Gladstone, of this

great Ministry, and of this mighty Bill, had been definitely pledged to

one throw of the dice. Imagine one of those contests which you find in

the pages of Turgenieff or Tolstoi, which perchance you may have seen at

Monte Carlo, which in the last few days may have been observed at Epsom

Downs--in which life or death, ruin or halcyon fortune, depended on one

throw--and you can have some sense of all that passed through the

imagination of the House and that made it almost audibly shiver when Mr.

Gladstone made this slight and terse interruption. Mr. Morley's

face--serious, often sombre--cast in a mould and reflective of a soul

inclined to the darker rather than the more cheerful view of life's

tangled and unsatisfactory workings--grew black and troubled; the other

Ministers who were present looked--not so eloquently, but still

perceptibly--uncomfortable; Mr. Asquith--who had been a close

observer--could not keep his keen anxiety from breaking through the mask

of easy equanimity with which he is able to clothe his readiness to meet

fortune in all her moods; in short, it was for Ministerialists one of

those uncomfortable quarters of an hour in which life seems to

concentrate all its bitterness, sorrow, and anxieties within a terribly

brief space of time. And if you wanted to know further what was the full

significance of what had taken place, you saw it in the open and almost

indecent joy of Mr. Chamberlain's face; in the more subdued but a still

unctuous look of Mr. Courtney; and you could hear it in the shriller

pitch of Mr. Balfour's voice.

[Sidenote: A false alarm.]

But all the same, it was a false alarm. For if the Old Man had tripped,

he was able to recover himself very soon. Mr. Balfour was foolish enough

to try and dot the "I's," and to put into Mr. Gladstone's mouth that

which his enemies hoped he had said. For Mr. Balfour, remarking that Mr.

Gladstone had made a more explicit declaration than any which had yet

come from his lips--this was all right, and was quite true--went on to

the further statement that the Old Man had now committed himself to

standing or falling by the ninth clause "in its present shape." This,

you will see, was the whole crux of the situation. If Mr. Gladstone had

said this, then, indeed, it might go hard with him by-and-bye, for

whether the Liberal party would accept the ninth clause in its present

shape was one of the questions yet to be decided. The Old Man, however

his words might have been open to this construction, had not in reality

said anything of the kind. And, at once, he was prompt to see how

necessary it was to correct this error, for he immediately rose to his

feet to say that he had never said anything of the sort. What he had

said was that the Government intended to stand by the principle that the

Irish members were to have a place in the Imperial Parliament, which, it

will be seen, leaves open the perilous and perplexing question: what

form that representation in the Imperial Parliament is to take. At once

there was a heavy sigh of relief, and most of all on the Irish Benches.

Among the Irishry, the declaration of Mr. Gladstone had produced a

moment of something like panic; the only exhibition of which was a

certain impatience with the attempt of Mr. Balfour to pin the Old Man

down to the most literal interpretation of his words. The panic soon

passed away. It was all, I say, a false alarm. Vulnerable though his

temper--though there was in him still enough of the hot onrush of battle

and of resistance under all the snow of advancing years--the great old

tactician had not forgotten his cunning. He at once seized the

opportunity of saying he was not finally committed to the ninth clause

in its present shape, and so we once more breathed freely.

[Sidenote: Joe comes back from dinner.]

This was the end of the important part of the debate before the dinner

hour. It is one of the peculiarities of Mr. Chamberlain that no stress

of a Parliamentary situation induces him to seriously interfere with his

habits. When the clock points to ten minutes to eight any evening of

the week, he may be seen to rise from his place with the inevitableness

of fate, and to disappear for a couple of hours. I have seen him do this

even when the fortune of a most important amendment seemed to lie

trembling in the balance--the one occasion on which I have known him to

break through that rigid rule was when his son was about to make that

maiden speech which started that promising young fellow on his

Parliamentary career. Coming back like a giant refreshed about ten

o'clock, Mr. Chamberlain contrived to once more set aflame the embers of

dying passion; and he threw himself into the fight over Lord Wolmer's

amendment at the moment when all life seemed to have gone out of it. His

speech was full of cleverness--of what the Americans call smartness, and

it had all that point, personal and party, which sets your friends in a

roar. The Tories cheered him vociferously, and point after point of

brilliant and effective invective pleased the House--always anxious with

its jaded appetite for a sensation. But when you had time to compare, it

with that little speech delivered by Mr. Gladstone earlier in the

evening--when you contrasted its fitful and gaudy brilliancy with the

sober and broad wisdom of Mr. Gladstone's utterance--then, indeed, you

were able to see what a gulf there is between the smart debater and the

genuine statesman.

[Sidenote: A narrow shave.]

At last the debate was over; and then came what was, perhaps, the most

exciting and most momentous incident of the evening. I have already

spoken of the interest with which every division is regarded. The

interest in this particular division was fully justified when the

numbers were told; for the Government majority had fallen to twenty-one.

At once there was a wild outburst of cheering from the Tory Benches.

Some wits ventured on the cry, "Resign! Resign!"--altogether, the Tories

had the best quarter of an hour they have enjoyed since that hideous

afternoon before the Easter vacation, when, after a prolonged fight, the

Old Man had to announce that he could not propose the second reading of

the Bill until after Easter. It was all more or less of an accident;

there were plenty of things to account for it--a reception at the House

of a prominent Liberal lady, and many other explanations: but, all the

same, it was a very ugly little incident; and though Mr. Gladstone

carried it off with that indomitable courage of his, which doesn't know

what a confession of defeat means, one could see that he did not like

it; and for the rest of the evening there was a visible gloom in the

Liberal ranks.

[Sidenote: Happy again.]

But May 31st brought the Derby, and with the Derby there came upon the

Tory Benches one of those moments of temptation which the natural man is

utterly unable to resist. The amendments followed each other in rapid

succession; division came on top of division; and in them all the

Liberals jumped back to their old superiority of numbers. In the earlier

part of the day, when the fortunes of Isinglass were still undetermined,

the majorities were enormous; and though there was a certain falling off

when sporting gentlemen began to get back from the dusty Downs, the

average was well kept up; and it was with a distinct rise in the

temperature of Liberal hopes and confidence that this stage was reached.

On the following day the lowness of the voice in the Old Man was a

little more perceptible, and when it got to midnight, he seemed

painfully fagged and exhausted. It was, perhaps, because he was in that

mood that he made some concessions to the Unionists, which have been

somewhat resented. But as these concessions, according to Mr. Gladstone

himself, only carried out what the Government had intended from the

first, these things may be passed. They had reference chiefly to

prohibition of raising in Ireland anything like a military force--even

in the shape of a militia or volunteer force. On June 2nd, there was one

of those transformations in which the Old Man is constantly surprising

friends and foes. He was alert, vigorous, watchful of everything that

went on, and the voice rose to its old strength and resonance. It was

during that afternoon that there was a slight indication for the first

time throughout the progress of the whole Bill of any dissatisfaction on

the part of the Irish members. Mr. Byrne--one of the Unionist gang of

lawyers--proposed a ridiculous amendment, the effect of which would have

been that the Irish Legislature would not have had the right to give a

license for a fowling-piece, or to arm their police to meet a rising of

the Orangemen.

[Sidenote: Mr. Sexton intervenes.]

It was then that Mr. Sexton intervened with a word of warning against

such a restriction. In burning though carefully restrained language, Mr.

Sexton replied to a taunt of Mr. Chamberlain at the silence of the Irish

members. Their silence, said Mr. Sexton, was due to their knowledge that

Mr. Chamberlain and his confederates had entered into a conspiracy to

destroy the power of the House of Commons, and to defeat the mandate of

the nation by obstructing a Bill they could not otherwise defeat. Spoken

with great fire--with splendid choice of language--with biting sarcasm,

of which he is a master--the speech was an event. Mr. Gladstone promptly

recognized its spirit; thanked the Irish members for their

consideration; and then declared, amid a great sniff from Joe's upturned

nose, that if the Irish members desired to express their opinions on any

amendment, he and his colleagues would wait before expressing their own

views. There seemed to be a slight hope among the Tories and the

ever-venomous Joe that this meant a rift in the lute between the Irish

members and the Government; but they were woefully

disappointed--especially when the amendment was indignantly rejected by

the House.

[Sidenote: The "Daily News."]

It is the outspoken, rather than the loudly uttered, that is often the

important thing in a House of Commons discussion. This was the case with

the curious little debate which Mr. Chamberlain initiated on June 6th.

The _Daily News_ had published a little article describing the manner

in which the Tories had shouted at--hooted--interrupted--Mr. Gladstone

on the Thursday night previous. It may at once be asked why Mr.

Chamberlain should have thought it necessary to notice the article. He

boasted that he was not in the habit of noticing what appeared against

him in the newspapers--which is not true to a certain extent, or at

least is not generally so thought, for it is understood that no man

reads more carefully the extracts sent to him by those press-cutting

agencies which have added either a new luxury or a new terror to public

life. But Mr. Chamberlain's action had many roots. First, like many

others, very free in their comments and attacks, he is almost childishly

sensitive. Watch him in the House of Commons when an attack is being

made upon him which he does not like, and the fierce and domineering

temper reveals itself in the fidgety movement, the darkened brow, the

deeper pallor on the white-complexioned face. When he was a Cabinet

Minister he could never, or rarely, be got to remain in the House of

Commons during the whole of the evening; and one of the chief reasons, I

have heard, he gave for thus absenting himself was that he could not

stand the talk from the opposite side--it made him so angry.

[Sidenote: Joe's motives.]

But there were other and more immediate reasons for his anger with the

_Daily News_. Joe was conscious of the growth of two feelings--either of

which was very perilous to him. First, he began uneasily to feel that

the country--watching the struggle between him and the Old Man--was

getting a little disgusted at the business; and saw in it a want of that

chivalry and fair play which it desires to see even in the fiercest

political controversy. This was not a pleasant sentiment to have growing

up against one; and Joe felt that it has serious perils to his future

political position. And, secondly, he was conscious that the majority of

the House of Commons was growing very restive under the desperate

obstruction of which he had made himself the champion, and that this

feeling might soon become strong enough to carry Mr. Gladstone and the

Ministers off their feet, and compel drastic measures which had hitherto

been steadily refrained from. This would not suit the book of Joe at

all, whose object it was to keep the struggle going as long as he

possibly could manage it, careless of the traditions of Parliament, of

the dignity and decency of the House of Commons, of the life and

strength of Mr. Gladstone, of everything except his own greedy desire

for personal revenge and triumph.

[Sidenote: Mr. Gladstone's gentleness.]

This was what lay behind the plausible and honeyed words in which Mr.

Chamberlain attacked the article in the _Daily News_. And here a curious

difficulty arose which rather helped Joe, and almost enabled him to

score a great triumph. Everybody knows that between the temper of Mr.

Gladstone and that of his friends and supporters there is an impassable

gulf. That mastery of a vulnerable temper, which accounted for many of

the troubles of his earlier political career, which he himself has

acknowledged in many a pathetic passage in his correspondence--that

mastery of the vulnerable temper is now so complete that the Old Man

glides through scenes of insult and passes over what the humblest member

of the House would often find it hard to endure. There is something

indeed strange, wistful, almost uncanny, in the unbreakable gentleness

of that white figure, with the ivory complexion, the scant white hair,

the large white collar and broad white shirt-front--there is something

which becomes almost an obsession to the observer in watching the figure

with its strangely tranquil and gentle expression in the heat and centre

of all this fierce Parliamentary battle.

[Sidenote: And eagerness.]

And what makes it all the more peculiar is that this strange gentleness

does not go side by side with want of interest in the struggle. On the

contrary, all those around him and near him declare that never has Mr.

Gladstone been more keen of any subject than he has been on this Home

Rule Bill. He thinks of nothing else; he enjoys it all. I saw a curious

instance of this intensity of his interest about that time. Having a

word to say to one of the Ministers, I was seated for a moment on the

Treasury Bench just beside the Chairman--Mr. Mellor. Mr. Gladstone had

gone out for a few minutes. Sir William Harcourt was in charge of the

Bill, and he was replying to some argument of the Unionists opposite.

Sir William Harcourt has an excellent method of dealing with futile and

dishonest amendments. He declines to argue them in detail. With that

rich humour of which the public know less than his friends and

intimates, Sir William airily dismisses the whole business, and with a

laugh brings down shivering to the ground a whole fabric of laboriously

constructed nonsense. Well, Sir William was in the middle of a sentence

in which he was speaking of the absurd suspicion of the Irish people

which was entertained by the Tories--and Mr. Gladstone, entering from

behind the Speaker's chair at that very moment, just caught that one

phrase. It was impossible for him to hear more than that one word

"suspicion"; but at that word he pricked up his ears, and while he was

still walking to his place--before he had seated himself--"Hear, hear,"

he cried. His eagerness would not let him wait till he had taken his

seat. His absolute absorption in the Bill before the House was so

complete that, as he walked to his seat, you could see the rapt and

concentrated look, which showed that, even during the few minutes he had

been away, the brain had never left for one second its absorbing theme.

[Sidenote: The consolations of old age.]

But--as I have indicated--this complete subjugation of temper which Mr.

Gladstone has achieved, has its disadvantages when such a conflict is

provoked as that with Mr. Chamberlain on the article in the _Daily

News_. Mr. Gladstone himself spoke of the consolations of old age; there

is one consolation he did not mention. His absorption in the Bill and

the slight deafness in one of his ears do not allow him to perceive so

plainly the rude noises and interruptions by which he is often assailed

from the Tory Benches. Moreover, the native chivalry of his disposition,

the curious simplicity which has remained his central characteristic, in

spite of all the experiences of the baser side of human nature which

must have been crowded into all that half a century of official and

Parliamentary life--that unwillingness to see anything but deplorable

error in his most rancorous, meanest, and most malignant opponent--all

these things make it difficult for him to understand the ugly realities

whose serpent heads show themselves plainly to almost every other eye

but his.

There is a dispute among the authorities as to the incidents of that

Thursday night--some, even among those friendly to the Prime Minister,

declaring that there was nothing unusual in the interruptions of that

night. My own recollection is clear that there was a great deal of

noise, and that it was so bad that Mr. Chamberlain tried to explain it

away, and was careful to absolve himself and his friends from all

responsibility for it. In the general body of the Liberal party there is

no doubt whatsoever about that business. Liberal after Liberal came up

to me afterwards, in allusion to a few remarks I felt it my duty to

make, to declare their entire agreement with the view I had put

forward--that the description of the _Daily News_, though consciously

and obviously written in the vein of parody, was a fair and just

description of what had taken place. Sir Henry Roscoe is not an

excitable politician, though no man holds to the Liberal faith more

firmly. He was met on the following Sunday by a friend, and when asked

how he viewed the situation, declared that he was rather "low!" Why? he

was asked. Because his heart was saddened and enraged by the treatment

of the splendid Old Man by Mr. Chamberlain and the Tories. To a leading

Liberal Minister, two Tories privately declared that their pain and

shame and disgust with the conduct of their own side to Mr. Gladstone

was so profound, that they had to get up and leave the House to control

their feelings.

[Sidenote: A complex situation.]

When, therefore, Mr. Chamberlain came forward with his audacious

complaint, this was the curious situation: that the bulk of the Liberal

party, and many even of their opponents, were convinced that the

comments of the _Daily News_ were more than justified. The frantic

cheers with which each successive sentence of the scathing attack in the

description was punctuated by the Liberal and Irish Benches, as Joe,

with affected horror, read them out, sufficiently indicated what they

thought. And, on the other hand, the man in whose defence this reply to

his assailants was made was just as convinced that his enemies had been

unjustly assailed, and that he himself had been well and courteously

treated. In such a situation it was just possible that Mr. Chamberlain

would escape from his position with flying colours; would have the

_Daily News_ censured for falsehood by a House of Commons that believed

in its truth; and have himself declared chivalrous by a Parliament that

knows him to be malignant, unscrupulous, and merciless. To prevent such

a catastrophe it was a painful but necessary duty to bring out the

realities of the case; and not only a painful but also a thankless duty

in face of what everybody knew would be the attitude of Mr. Gladstone

himself.

[Sidenote: Mr. Gladstone shakes his head.]

For Mr. Gladstone did not delay long in indicating to the House what his

attitude would be. When I was speaking and denouncing the rude

interruptions of the eventful Thursday night, he shook his head

ominously and in contradiction--though manifestations which came from

Liberal and Irish Benches showed that he stood alone in his view of the

events of that night. And it was no surprise to the House, therefore,

when he stood up and said that he entirely disclaimed any feeling of

resentment for anything that had been done to him, and that he confessed

he had not perceived the interruptions to which the report of the _Daily

News_ had called attention. After this, there seemed no more to be

said; but the battle was not yet over. The Tories had been charged both

by the _Daily News_ and by a speech in the House with want of courtesy

to Mr. Gladstone. Nobody knew better than Mr. Balfour how much ground

there was for such a charge; for often in the course of the present

Session--with a dark frown on his face, with an almost violent

gesture--he has called on his unruly followers behind him to conduct

themselves. The effect of what had taken place was to extort from Mr.

Balfour a tribute to the universal respect in which the Prime Minister

was held--a tribute which the splendid Old Man acknowledged by a low

bow; and, in short, the Tories had to bind themselves over to keep the

peace by their professions of a chivalrous desire to respect the person

and the feelings of the great Prime Minister. And thus it was that it

ended for the moment in a drawn battle--Mr. Chamberlain having to

withdraw his motion, and I my amendment.

[Sidenote: Slow progress.]

But in the meantime the progress with the Bill was terribly slow. We

were now on the second week with the third clause. Amendments were

disposed of one night only to find that the next day the number of

amendments, instead of being diminished, had been increased. It would be

a sheer waste of time and space to go into detail about these

amendments. The third clause is the clause which deals with the

questions that are to be excluded from the Irish Parliament. The list is

sufficiently long--peace and war--the Crown--the Lord-Lieutenancy--trade

and commerce--the coinage and the currency--copyright and

navigation--treason and treason felony. But even this list was not

sufficiently long for the Unionists. They propose to increase this list

of exemptions until, if they succeeded, the Irish Legislature would have

to shut up shop for want of business to attend to. One man gravely

proposed that the Irish executive--being made responsible for the peace,

order, and good Government of Ireland--should not have the right to

settle the procedure in the Irish criminal courts. Another gentleman

proposed that all cases referring to criminal conspiracy should be left

to the Imperial Government and Parliament. The meaning of all this was

that the Unionists wanted to draw a ring fence around the Orangemen of

Ulster, who had been threatening rebellion. First, by one set of

amendments the Irish Government was not to have a police able to put

them down, and then the Irish courts were not to be able to convict them

when they broke the law.

[Sidenote: The hours of labour.]

On June 9th the Unionists were on another line. They professed to think

that if the Irish Legislature were not compelled to do so they would not

prevent overwork and long hours. This led to the proposal that all

legislation on hours of labour should be taken out of the hands of the

Irish Parliament. Mr. Chamberlain argued this with his tongue in his

cheek--professing to dread the unequal competition in which poor England

would be placed if wealthy Ireland were allowed to compete unfairly by

longer hours. He urged this in a speech directed to every absurd

prejudice and alarm which the ignorant or the timid could

feel--altogether made a most unworthy contribution. John Burns--breezy,

outspoken--not friendly to all things done by the Liberals in the past,

but firm in his Home Rule faith--went for Mr. Chamberlain in good,

honest, sledge-hammer, and workmanlike fashion. The member for Battersea

even dared to blaspheme Birmingham--the Mecca of the industrial

world--for its notoriously bad record in industrial matters--an attack

which Joe seemed in no way to relish. And all the time the Old Man--with

his hand to his ear, and sitting on the very end of the Treasury Bench,

so as to be nearer the speaker--listened attentively, sympathetically,

occasionally uttering that fine leonine cheer of his. It was on this

amendment that the Ministerial majority fell, owing to various

accidents, to 30, and the Tories cheered themselves into a happy

condition of mind for a few minutes.

[Sidenote: The guillotine--but not yet.]

Towards the end of the sitting there was a certain feverishness of

expectation. Dr. McGregor, a Scotch Highland member, had announced that

at half-past six he would move the closure of the third clause--on which

we had now been working for a fortnight. But Mr. Mellor refused to put

such a drastic proposal on the suggestion of a private member. There

was, however, a very plain intimation that if a Minister were to make

such a proposal it might be considered differently; all of which meant

that we were approaching--slowly, patiently, forbearingly--but still

approaching the moment when drastic steps would be taken to accelerate

progress.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE SEXTON INCIDENT.

[Sidenote: Mr. Sexton.]

The resignation of Mr. Sexton, early in June, seemed to point to one of

those disastrous splits in the Irish ranks which have always come at the

wrong moment to spoil the chances of the Irish cause. There were many

whose memories were brought back by the event to that trying and strange

time when Mr. Parnell fought his desperate battle for the continuance of

his leadership. But then there were many modifications of the position,

and the chief of these was the much greater tranquillity with which the

affair was regarded; and the general faith that the Irish members would

be wise enough to settle their differences satisfactorily. Still there

were some very ugly moments.

[Sidenote: A Conservative opportunity.]

Nothing could be more galling, for instance, to those who had charge of

the Home Rule Bill, than to look across at the Irish Benches and see a

vast and aching void in the places where the representatives of the

people mainly concerned are accustomed to sit. The Tories were not slow

to utilise the moment; and if things had been different--if the Home

Rule cause had not got so far--they would probably have been able to

stop progress with the measure altogether. But fortunately the Home Rule

Bill was in committee--and whether men like it or not, it is impossible

for them to avoid something like business discussion when a Bill is in

committee. There is the clause under discussion; there are the

amendments to it, which stand on the paper; the clause and the

amendments have to be spoken to; and it is impossible, within the limits

of a discussion so defined, to introduce a subject so extraneous as a

domestic difficulty in the Irish ranks. But, at the same time, the

opportunity was too tempting to be altogether passed without notice. Sir

John Lubbock has taken a prominent part at times in opposing the Home

Rule Bill. Sir John is a most estimable man, has written some very

entertaining books, and in the City has appropriate rank as both an

erudite and a rich banker. But he does not shine in the House of

Commons. His voice is thin and feeble, and his arguments, somehow or

other, always appear wire-drawn. And then the House of Commons is a

place, above all others, where physical qualities go largely towards

making success or failure. A robustious voice and manner are the very

first essentials of Parliamentary success; and no man who is not gifted

with these things has really much right to try Parliamentary life.

However, Sir John Lubbock was not strong enough to withstand the

temptation of making capital out of Irish misfortunes; and he pointed to

the Irish Benches, with their yawning emptiness, as a proof that the

Irish members took no interest whatsoever in the Home Bale Bill.

[Sidenote: Irish objections to divorce.]

Meantime, in the House itself the Home Rule Bill was crawling slowly

along. The Unionists were at their sinister work of delaying its

progress by all kinds of absurd and irrelevant amendments. For instance,

one Unionist wished to restrict the Irish Legislature as to the law of

marriage and divorce. Mr. Gladstone has over and over again pointed out

that, as the Irish have one way of looking at these things, and the

English another, it would be absurd not to allow the Irish Legislature

to settle such a matter in accordance with Irish feeling. Curiously

enough, the Unionists did not receive much encouragement on this point

from the Irish branch of the enemies of Home Rule. Mr. Macartney, an

Irish Orangeman, proclaimed on the part of his co-religionists that the

Irish Protestants had nearly as much objection to divorce as the Irish

Catholics; and, so far as that part of the amendment was concerned, he

had no desire to see it pressed. What he apprehended was a change in the

law for the purpose of prejudicing mixed marriages--marriages between

Catholics and Protestants. Mr. Gladstone, it is well known, on the

question of divorce is a very sound and very strong Conservative. The

sturdy fight he made against divorce still lives in Parliamentary

history, and has often been brought up--sometimes in justification of

equally stubborn fights--against him. It is one of the points on which

he does not seem to have much modified his opinions, in spite of the

advance of time, and all that has taken place in the long stretch of

years between now and the day when an unbelieving and pagan minister

like Lord Palmerston enabled men and women to get rid of adulterous

spouses. But Mr. Gladstone declined to be drawn.

[Sidenote: Disestablishment.]

On June 18th, Mr. Bartley proposed an amendment to a restriction in the

Bill with regard to the establishment and endowment of any church. By

the Bill--as is pretty well known--the Irish Parliament are forbidden to

confer on any church the privilege of State establishment and State

endowment. To this restriction no Irish member has ever raised the least

objection. It was reserved for Mr. Bartley--one of the most vehement

opponents of Irish nationality and an Irish Parliament--to declare that

such a restriction would make the Parliament unworthy of the acceptance

of a nation of freemen, and to propose that accordingly it should be

removed. The position, then, in which the Irish opponents of the Bill

were placed, was this--that while denouncing the supremacy and

encroachments of the Catholic Church as one of the main objections

against the Bill, they proposed that the Irish Parliament should have

the right to establish and endow that very Church. Mr. Balfour

perceived--under the light thus borne in upon him--that this was not an

amendment which the Tory party could safely support; and he accordingly

advised Mr. Bartley to withdraw it. Mr. Gladstone made a few scornful

observations; and, without a division, the proposal was huddled out of

sight. It was almost a pity. It would have been such an instructive

spectacle to see the whole Tory party voting that the Catholic Church in

Ireland should have the right to be endowed and established; and some of

the Irish members felt this so much, that they were very much inclined

to force the Tories to a division. But they let the incident pass.

[Sidenote: The triumph of the tweed coat.]

It is one of the curious things about Parliamentary life in England,

that the smallest detail of personal habit attracts the all-searching

gaze of the entire world. Let a man change the shape of his hat, the

colour of his clothes, the style even of his stockings, and the world

knows it all before almost he is himself conscious of the change. And

then, though the House of Commons consists for the most part of men well

advanced in middle life--men who have made their pile in counting-house

or shop, before devoting themselves to a Parliamentary career--it is

also a House where wealth and fashion are very largely represented. It

is often a very well-dressed body; and in this House of Commons, in

particular, there is a very large proportion of well-tailored and

well-groomed young men--especially, of course, on the Tory side. The

consequence is, that you are able to trace the transformations of

fashion, the processions of the seasons, the variety of appropriate

garbs which social and other engagements impose, as accurately in the

House of Commons as in Rotten Row.

[Sidenote: The old order.]

The ordinary tendency of the Parliamentary man is towards the sombre

black, and the solemnity of the long-tailed frock-coat. There have been

times when if a member of Parliament did venture to enter the House of

Commons in a coat prematurely ending in the short tails of the morning

coat, or in the tail-less sack-coat, he would have been called up to the

Speaker's chair and as severely reprimanded as though he had committed

the most atrocious offence--in those far-off days--of wearing a pot-hat.

But in these democratic times one can do anything; and low-crowned hats,

sack-coats, homespun Irish tweeds, affright and shock the old

aristocratic Parliamentary eye. When summer approaches, the whole aspect

of the House changes. The sombre black is almost entirely doffed; and

you look on an assembly as different in its outward appearance from its

antecedent state as the yellow-winged butterfly is from the grim grub.

Indeed, members of Parliament seem to take a delight in anticipating the

change of dress which the change of season imposes. There are members of

the House of Commons who can claim to wear the very first white hat of

the season. Sir Wilfrid Lawson has a sombre creed and a Bacchanalian

spirit; and, accordingly, the very first time a mere stray gleam of

sunshine streaks the wintry gloom Sir Wilfrid wears an audaciously white

hat.

[Sidenote: Mr. Gladstone's rejuvenescence.]

Mr. Gladstone is a curious mixture of splendour and carelessness. He

nearly always wears a small, narrow black tie, which brings into greater

relief the Alpine heights and the measureless width of his big

shirt-collars, and the broad expanse of his shirt-front. But this

tie--though it marks a pleasant and becoming individuality of

dress--loses half its effect by nearly always getting out of its place;

when night is advanced, the knot is always about half across Mr.

Gladstone's neck. On the other hand, he is nearly always very carefully

dressed; his black frock-coat--a little ancient in make, and always of

the smooth black, which has given way with younger men to the

diagonals--is a well-known feature of every great debate, and adds grace

to his appearance and delivery. When summer comes, however, he bursts

into an almost dazzling glory of white waistcoats, grey cashmere coats,

and hats of creamy-yellow whiteness, ethereal and almost aggressively

summery. The younger men are not slow to follow so excellent an

example--though generally there is the tendency to the dark grey, which

is a compromise between the black of winter and the fiery white tweed

which the man in the street is wont to wear. Sir Charles Russell--who,

returning from Paris on the same day as Mr. Sexton, received a very warm

welcome--is also a child of his age in his clothes. Time was when a

great legal luminary--especially if he were on the bench--was supposed

to be violating every canon of good taste if he did not wear garments

which might be described as a cross between the garb of a bishop, an

undertaker, and a hangman. The judge on the bench, in fact, was always

supposed to be putting on the black cap figuratively, and, therefore,

was obliged to bear with him the outward sign of his damnable trade. The

late Lord Cairns was the first to break through this tradition, and

affect the style of the prosperous stockbroker. Sir Charles Russell is

different, for he dresses in thorough taste; but when one saw him in the

House of Commons in a grey suit and a deep-cut waistcoat, one might have

taken him for a gentleman squire with a taste for study, varied by an

occasional visit to Newmarket.

[Sidenote: Mr. Morley's tweed suit.]

All these observations have been suggested by the portentous fact that

on June 15th Mr. John Morley startled the world of Parliament by

appearing in a very neat, a very well cut, and a very light tweed suit.

If Mr. Morley figures in many Tory imaginations as a modern St. Just,

longing for the music of the guillotine and the daily splash of Tory and

orthodox blood, it is much more due to his clothes than to his writings;

for ordinarily he is dressed after the fashion which one can well

suppose reigned in the days when the men of the Terror were inaugurating

a reign of universal love, brotherhood, and peace through the narrow

opening between the upper and the lower knife of the guillotine. His

coat is blue: so is his waistcoat; and his nether garments are of a

severe drab brown. It is impossible to imagine that any man who assumes

such garments could be otherwise than a severe and sanguinary

doctrinaire, anxious for his neighbours' blood. The genial smile with

which the House of Commons has become familiar has invalidated the Tory

estimate of Mr. Morley, but it was that memorable Thursday that

completed the transformation of judgment. No man could be a lover of the

guillotine who could wear so airy, so gay, and, above all, so juvenile

and well-cut a suit of clothes. Mr. Morley himself was overwhelmed with

the amount of attention which his new suit attracted. He, poor man, did

not see the portentous political significance of the transaction, and

almost sank under the multitude and variety of congratulations which he

received from watchful friends. He has done many great and successful

things in the course of his brilliant career--but he never achieved a

triumph so complete and so prompt as he did when he put on his light

tweed suit, and steered under its illuminating rays the Home Rule Bill

through the rocks and shoals, the eddies and the cross-currents of the

House of Commons.

[Sidenote: A brilliant pas de deux.]

On the following afternoon there was another scene in which clothes had

their share. At about three o'clock there entered the House together two

slight, alert figures--in both cases a little above the middle height,

and both clothed in a suit of clothes the exact counterpart of each

other in make, shape, and colour. There was a dominant and almost

monotonous grey in their appearance; but there was little of grey in

their looks. When at once there burst from the Tory and Unionists

Benches a loud, wild, prolonged huzzah, it was seen that this theatrical

little entrance at one and the same time of Joe and Mr. Balfour, was

their method of accentuating the Tory triumph in Linlithgow. The two

gentlemen seen entering together separated as they walked up the

floor--the Tory going to his place on the front Opposition Bench, the

Unionist to his corner seat on the Liberal side. It was a very skilfully

arranged bit of business, though there were critics who thought its

histrionic element a little out of place in the sombre and solemn

realities of public life, and a great national controversy. In the midst

of it all I looked at Mr. Gladstone. It is in such moments that you are

able to get a glimpse into all the great depths of this extraordinary

nature. And I have written more than once in these columns that the

greatest of all his characteristics is composure. This mighty, restless,

fiery fighter against wrong--this stalwart and unconquerable wrestler

for right, this Titan--I might even say this Don Quixote--who has gone

out with spear and sword to assault the most strongly-entrenched

citadels of human wrongs--who has faced a world in arms--this man has,

after all, at the centre of his existence, and in the depths of his

nature, a gospel which sustains him in the hours of defeat and gloom,

and makes him one of the most restless of combatants, and the most

tranquil.

[Sidenote: The grand old philosopher.]

Devotional, almost pietistic, introspective, accustomed, I have no

doubt, from that early training of domestic piety and sacerdotal

surroundings, to see all this gay, vast phantasmagoria of life the

antechamber to a greater, more enduring, and better world beyond those

voices, Mr. Gladstone--at least that is my reading of his

character--looks at everything in human existence with the power of

self-detachment from its garish moments and its transient interests.

Behind this constant warfare, underneath all this public passion and

sweeping resolves, there is a nether and unseen world of thought,

emotion, hope, and in that world there is ever calm. It is a tabernacle

in his soul where only holy thoughts may enter. Outside its impenetrable

and echoless walls are left behind the shouts of faction, the noise of

battle, the rise and fall of the good and ever-enduring fight between

wrong and right. Within that tabernacle Mr. Gladstone has the power of

withdrawing himself at will, just as in the Agora of Athens, and on the

last great day when he discoursed on immortality, and drank the mortal

hemlock, Socrates could withdraw himself, and listen to the inner

whisper of his dæmon. All this, I say, you could see in the abstracted,

resigned and composed look of Mr. Gladstone at the moment when his

triumphant enemies, in their summer garb, with their smiling faces, and

strutting walk, entered the House of Commons. If you wanted to see at

once the contrast, not only of the temper of the hour, but the still

greater and more momentous contrast of temperaments, you had only to

look from the face of Mr. Gladstone to that of Mr. Chamberlain. The

contrast of their years--the deeper contrast of their natures--above

all, the profounder contrast of their worlds of thought, training and

environment--all were brought out. In that perky, retroussé-nosed,

self-complacent, confidently smiling man you saw all the

flippancy--so-called realism--the petty commercialism of the end of the

middle of the nineteenth century. The mysticism, the poetry, the rich

devotion, the lofty and large ideals of the beginning of the century--of

the time that remembered Byron and produced Newman--all these things

were to be seen in the rapt look of that noble, beautiful and refined

face on the Treasury Bench. And yet there was something more. The

brilliant light of the early days of our century has become dim and cold

in those hearts and minds which have not had the power to grow and

expand with their ages. But with that splendid sanity of body as well as

mind which belongs to him, Mr. Gladstone is the creature of the ending

of the nineteenth as of the beginning of the twentieth century. Like the

man of Arctic climes, he stands almost at the same moment in the sunset

of one great century and the heralding light of the sunrise of another.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE BURSTING OF THE STORM.

[Sidenote: An Indian summer.]

There is a striking description in one of Mr. Rudyard Kipling's stories

of a night in an Indian city when the dog star rages. Luridly, but

vigorously, the author brings home to you the odious discomfort, the

awful suffering, and, finally, the morose anger and almost homicidal

fury, which the sweltering light produces in the waking soldiers. This

would have been something like the temper of the House of Commons on

June 18th, if that assembly had not recently discovered methods of

saving its temper and pleasantly spending its vacant hours. For the dog

star--raging, merciless, sweltering--ruled everywhere within Westminster

Palace. On the floor of the House itself, men sweltered and mopped their

foreheads; in even the recesses of the still library they groaned aloud;

then down on the Terrace, and with the river sweeping by, there was not

a particle of air; and the heat of all the day had made even the stony

floor of that beautiful walk almost like the tiles of a red-hot oven. In

short, it was a day when one felt one's own poor tenement of clay a

misery, a nuisance, and a burden; and the mind, morose, black, and

despondent, had distracting visions of distant mirages by the seashore

or under green trees. It was natural, under such circumstances, that

everybody who could should desert the House of Commons. And this sudden

desertion of the House will be always remembered as one of the many

peculiarities of the Annus Mirabilis through which we are passing. It

has not been unusual for some years for members to take a turn on the

Terrace now and then. I have paced its floor at every hour of the night

and the day--from the still midnight to the delightful moments before

breaking day; and I still remember the beautiful summery morning when,

after a hard night's fight, an Irish member rushed down to the Terrace

to tell Mr. Sexton and myself that we were just being suspended--an

operation not yet grown customary. But this Session the majority of the

House of Commons is always on the Terrace; and woman--that sleuth-hound

of every new pleasure--has discovered this great fact, and utilised it

accordingly.

[Sidenote: Tea on the Terrace.]

The afternoon tea--the strawberries and cream which make a coolness and

delight in the midst of the raging day--has been erected by woman into

one of London's daily social events; and though the novelist has not

discovered the fact up to this moment--Mr. McCarthy has made a very

pretty love scene on the Terrace, but it is at the witching hour of

night--though this discovery has yet to come, the respite is brief, and

in a short time we shall have the hero and the heroine passing through

all the agonies of three-volume suffering, to the accompaniment of the

division bell and the small tea-table of the Terrace. But though woman

has many slaves she has her watchful enemies. The great order of

curmudgeon is wide and vigilant and crusty, and the curmudgeon has found

that the vast crowds of ladies who have invaded the Terrace have at last

begun to interfere with that daily constitutional along its stretching

length, which is the only exercise most members of Parliament are able

to take in these fierce days. Accordingly, there appeared an ominous

notice-board with the words, "For members only," at a particular point

in the Terrace. Within the space, before which this notice stood as a

fiery sword, woman was not allowed to intrude; and from out its sacred

enclosure--guarded by nothing but the line of the notice and the

Speaker's wrath--the confirmed bachelor, the married cynic, smoked his

cigarette, and looked lazily through at the chattering, tea-drinking,

bright-coloured crowd immediately beyond.

[Sidenote: Demos and dinner.]

I regret to say that the great Demos had an opportunity of seeing the

legislator at work and play, and that the remarks of that extremely

irreverent person were not complimentary. Reading, doubtless, in the

papers something of the fatiguing labours--of the stern attention to

business--of the long and dreary hours which the patriots of the House

of Commons were devoting to the work of the country, Demos was shocked

and scandalised to behold this giddy, fashionable, and modish crowd.

Demos, sweltering on the passing steamboat--able to see, and, at the

same time, free from interference on his watery kingdom--jeered aloud as

he passed close to the Terrace, and mocked with loud laughter that

betokened not only the vacant but the insulting mind. The skippers of

the steamboats--hardened Cockneys with an eye to business--knew what a

delight this baiting of the august assembly would be to the most

democratic and most sarcastic crowd in Europe; and accordingly it became

the "mot d'ordre" with the steamboat skipper, when the tide was full, to

bring his vessel almost to the very walls of the Terrace, and thus to

give the tripper the opportunity of gazing from very near at the lions

at food and play. If Demos could have come and seen as plainly at night

in those days as during the afternoon, his shocked feelings would have

been even more poignant and his language more irreverent. Tea is, after

all, a simple drink that makes the whole world akin; and even

strawberries in this great year were within reach of the most modest

purse. But at night, entertainment is more costly. Along the Terrace

there is now, as everybody knows, a series of small dining-rooms; and

here every night you might have listened to the pleasant music of

woman's laughter, punctuated by the pop of the champagne bottle. Time

was--I remember it well--when a member of Parliament who knew that

there was any place where a lady could get something to eat was pointed

to as a Parliamentary marvel, who knew his way about in an uncanny

fashion; when the room in which a lady could dine had been seen by but

few eyes and, indeed, was little better than a coalhole, low-roofed,

dimly lit, buried in dark and deep recesses of an underworld of the

House of Commons, as little known to the general member as the sewage

catacombs of London to the ordinary citizen. But all this has been

changed; and now the dinner to ladies at the House of Commons has

become, like the afternoon tea, one of the best recognized of London's

social festivities. And so great is the run on these dinners that it

takes a week's--or even two weeks'--notice to secure a table. Mr.

Cobbe--a stern and unbending Radical, with a hot temper and unsparing

tongue--might have been seen one of those June days with a menacing

frown upon his rugged Radical forehead, and by-and-bye in serious

converse with the Speaker. And the cause of his anger was that he had

found all the dining-tables ordered for two weeks ahead.

[Sidenote: A wild scene.]

Speaking on the Freemasons, on June 22nd, Mr. Gladstone related the

interesting autobiographical fact that he himself was not a Freemason,

and never had been; and, indeed, having been fully occupied

otherwise--this delicate allusion to that vast life of never-ending

work--of gigantic enterprises--of solemn and sublime responsibilities,

was much relished--he never had had sufficient curiosity to make any

particular inquiries as to what Freemasonry really was. I don't know

what came over Mr. Balfour--some people thought it was because he

expected to detach some Freemason votes from the Liberal side; but he

was guilty of what I admit is an unusual thing with him--an intentional,

a gross, an almost shameful misrepresentation of Mr. Gladstone's words.

Making the same interesting personal statement as Mr. Gladstone, that he

was not himself a Freemason, he went on to suggest that Mr. Gladstone

had made a comparison between a fraudulent Liberator Society and the

Freemasons. At this thrust there was a terrible hubbub in the House, and

that fanaticism with which the Mason holds to his institution was

aroused; indeed, for a little while, the scene was Bedlam-like in its

passion and anarchy. In the midst of it all, facing the violent howls of

the excited Tories, pale, disturbed, hotly angry underneath all the

composure of language and tone, Mr. Gladstone exposed the shameful and

entirely groundless misrepresentation. Mr. Balfour's better angel

intervened; he got ashamed of himself, and at once apologized. But the

hurricane of passion which had been let loose was not to be so easily

appeased; and when, presently, Mr. John Morley put an end to the

ridiculous and irrelevant discussion which threatened to land the House

of Commons into the consideration of the arcana of a Freemason's Lodge,

there burst from the Tory benches one of the fiercest little storms of

remonstrance I have ever heard. When the closure is proposed, there is

but one way of expressing emotion. Under the rules of the House, the

motion must be put without debate. So when the word of doom is

pronounced by the Minister, all that remains is for the Speaker or

Chairman to refuse or accept the motion; and if he accept the motion, he

simply rises, and, uttering the fateful words, "The question is that the

motion be now put," guillotines all further speech. But then he has to

put the question, and in the answering words of "Aye" or "No," there can

be put an immense fund of passion. So it was that night. The answering

"Noes" reached the proportions of a cyclone; you could see men shrieking

out the word again and again, almost beside themselves with rage, and

with faces positively distorted by the intensity of their feelings. And

the tempest did not end in a moment; again and again the Tories shouted

their hoarse and tempestuous, and angry "No, no!"--the word sometimes

repeated like a volley: "No, no-o-o, no-o-o-o-o!"--this was the noise

that rose on the Parliamentary air, and that gave vent to all the

passion which had been excited. And then came the division and a

restoration of calm.

[Sidenote: Charwomen and ratcatchers.]

The Whip is a cunning dog, especially if he be the Whip of the party in

power; and you have to be a long time in Parliament before you know all

his wiles, and fully appreciate their meaning. For instance, few

innocent outsiders would understand why it is that the Whip always puts

down Estimates for a day immediately after the end of a vacation. The

reasons are two. First, because Estimates give more time and opportunity

for the mere bore and obstructive than any other part of Parliamentary

business. On the Estimates, as I have often explained, every single

penny spent in the public service has to be entered. Whether that sum be

large or small makes no difference. For instance, there is a charwoman

at the Foreign Office; the charwoman's salary appears in the accounts

just as bold and just as plain as the five thousand a year which the

country has to pay for Lord Rosebery--who is cheap at the money, I must

say, lest I be misunderstood. There is associated with Buckingham Palace

a most worthy and useful individual called the ratcatcher. Everybody can

see why in such a vast and generally untenanted barrack, there should be

a ratcatcher. Well, Master Ratcatcher appears on the Estimates for

Buckingham Palace just as regularly, as plainly, in as much detail, as

my Lord High Chamberlain, Lord Carrington. There is no reason whatever

why a whole evening should not be spent in the discussion of the

ratcatcher's salary. Perhaps the reader may have heard that, in common

with many sobered and middle-aged gentlemen, I have had a pre-historic

period when I was accused--of course, unjustly--of interfering with the

progress of public business. In that period, I remember very well, the

ratcatcher of Buckingham Palace loomed largely, as well as many other

strange and portentous figures now vanished into the void and the

immensities. I don't know whether we were able to keep the Ministry

going for a whole night on the subject or not; but still we managed to

get some excellent change out of the business.

[Sidenote: The wistful Whip.]

This brief explanation will make the reader understand what it is you

can do on the Estimates, and therefore bring home to your mind the wile

of the Ministerial Whip. For his second reason for putting down the

Estimates until after vacation is, that he knows there will be a very

small attendance of members, and that thus he will be able to sneak

through his Estimates more quickly than usual. When, therefore, you hear

of a vacation in the House of Commons, you will always find that the

members ask with peculiar anxiety what is to be the first business on

the day on which the vacation concludes; and you will hear the audible

sigh of relief which will rise from hundreds of oppressed bosoms when

the Leader of the House for the time being announces that it will be

Estimates. Members then know that they need be in no violent hurry to

get back, and that things will go right, even though they should tarry

that additional day, or even two days, longer by the sad sea waves or

amid the tall grass.

[Sidenote: To thy orisons.]

It is one of the peculiarities of the House of Commons that the men who

are most in want of spiritual assistance and providential guidance,

never seek the assistance of prayer. However terrible the crisis,

however crowded every other inch of space in the House of Commons may

be, though the ungodliest member may be in his place listening to the

rich resonance of Archdeacon Farrar's voice, the Treasury Bench is

always empty. To an outsider the explanation may be here revealed; which

is, that if you attend prayers you are entitled to a seat for the

remainder of the evening, whereas if you are absent, you are liable at

any moment to be turned out by your more pious brother. But Ministers

are exempt from this general law, for their places are fixed for them on

the Treasury Bench, whatever may happen, and, accordingly, they

invariably--I had almost said religiously--keep away from prayers. Lest

I should appear to do injustice, I may say that the leaders of the

Opposition are just as ungodly, and for precisely the same reason; their

seats also are secured to them by standing order; and, accordingly, they

also never enter the House until its devotions for the day are over.

There was just one exception to this. For some reason best known to

himself, Sir John Gorst (he is usually at variance with his friends) had

come down early on June 28th, and was in his place with edifying aspect

to listen to the solemn exhortation and the soft responses.

[Sidenote: The shout of battle.]

At twenty minutes past twelve there is a roar in the House; the Old Man

has arrived; and there ascends that bracing cheer with which in our

still barbarous times we welcome our champions on the eve of a big

fight. The Old Man has hurried, for he is out of breath; and the deadly

pallor of his cheek is almost affrighting to see. But he soon recovers

himself, though when he rises to speak the breathlessness is still very

apparent, and he has to gasp almost now and then for more voice.

Fortunately on this occasion we have not long to wait for the big

announcement which everybody is so anxiously expecting. It is usually

the fate of the House of Commons, whenever something very momentous is

under weigh, to have a thousand trivialities in its path before it gets

on to the real business. I have heard something like a hundred questions

asked, most of them very trivial, on more than one night, when the whole

of the civilized world was waiting for the Minister to develop some

great plan of Governmental policy. The bore, the faddist, the empty

self-advertiser, is as inevitable on such occasions as the reportorial

dog that always rushes along the Derby course at that dread moment when

you can hear the beating of the gamblers' hearts.

[Sidenote: To business.]

But on this fateful Wednesday there is no such ridiculous intervention.

There are only two questions altogether on the paper; and both of those

refer to the great issue of how obstruction is to be put down. Mr.

Gladstone answers the questions very briefly; but there is hidden and

fateful meaning in every syllable he utters; and the House of Commons,

looking on, shows itself in one of those moments which bring out all its

picturesqueness--its latent passions--its very human characteristics.

There is the eager strain of curiosity. Every face is turned to that of

the single pale white solitary figure that stands out from the Treasury

Bench, dressed, I may add, in the sober but light grey suit of the

summer season, in spite of his being a messenger of such doom to Tory

obstruction. There is a hush, but a hush never lasts long in the House

of Commons when a great party blow is going to be struck. The nerves of

the House, raised to expectancy--tension, almost hysteria, by the joy of

the one side, the anger and dread of the other, have a preternatural

readiness in catching points, in producing outbursts of feeling. And so

it is to-day. The Prime Minister has scarcely uttered the words which

reveal the determination of the Government to resort to the most extreme

measures, when there burst simultaneously from the Irish and the Tory

Benches cheers and counter cheers--the cheer of pride, joy, and delirium

almost, in the one case; the answering cheer and counter cheer of

haughty and angered defiance in the other.

[Sidenote: Balfour the unready.]

The Old Man bears himself splendidly amidst all this. He is very excited

and very resolute--you can see that by the very deadliness of

tranquillity which he seeks to put in his voice, by the gentleness of

his tone, by the almost deprecatory smile. All the same, the prevalent

note of his voice and manner is composure. For the moment, either from

surprise, relief, the joy they can badly conceal--whatever the reason,

the Tories seem to be nonplussed. The audacious ally who is always ready

to rush rashly into the breach on such occasions is away in Birmingham;

and with all his excellent qualities, Mr. Balfour is not remarkable for

readiness. Accordingly there is an awkward pause, and no one rises from

the Opposition Benches. This is serious, for first blood tells in

Parliamentary as in other prize fights. The Old Man, however, is all

alive. He passes on from this mighty announcement as though he had said

nothing in particular, and taking a bundle of notes--put together with

characteristic care and neatness even in the very centre of all this

storm--he proceeds to tell Mr. Goschen something about the currency

question, and the state of the silver market in India. The currency--who

cares about the currency now? Even the hardiest bimetallist cannot be

got to think of his hobby in the face of the dread news just heard. By

the time Mr. Gladstone has given his answers, Mr. Balfour has managed to

slightly recover himself, and has framed a question to the Old Man.

[Sidenote: The precedent of 1887.]

When at last the question does come, it is of a very innocent character.

The Old Man has declared that he had not the terms of the resolution

ready, but that they would be announced to the House before its rising

in the evening. All Mr. Balfour wishes to know is, what time it will be

when these terms are given. Such is the simple question; but the reply

is of a very different character. It was delivered in studiously

moderate terms; the voice of Mr. Gladstone never rises above a sweet

coo; but there is fire, defiance, inflexible determination in every

syllable, and the first blow is struck when the wily Old Man

announces--as though it were the merest business affair--that the

closure resolution which the Government will introduce, is founded upon

the principle of the resolution of 1887. He can go no further for

several seconds. The Irish, with their ready wits--their fierce and keen

memories--have caught the point at once; and they burst into a

cheer--loud, fierce, and prolonged. What it means is this: In 1887, the

Tories had carried a closure resolution for the purpose of forcing

through the Coercion Bill of that year; and it was under the working of

that closure resolution that the Bill had finally passed the House of

Commons, with several of its clauses undebated. What, then, this fierce

Irish cheer meant was that the chickens were coming home to roost; and

that the Tories were now reaping the harvest of their own sowing. With

grave face the Old Man waited until the storm had spent itself, and then

he went on to make a little slip, which for the moment gave his enemies

an excellent opening.

[Sidenote: Revolution or resolution.]

He spoke not of the resolution, but of the revolution. He corrected the

slip with great rapidity, but he was not quick enough for his watchful

enemies, and loudly--discordantly--triumphantly--they repeated the word

after him--Revolution--Revolution. However, Mr. Gladstone, after his

Socratic fashion, lowered his eyes for a moment and went off into one of

those abstract reveries whither he always allows his fancy to wend its

way whenever his opponents are particularly rancorous. Then he described

the resolution--not the revolution--as in the interest of the

convenience and liberty of the House. But he immediately added--with the

sweetest smile--that Mr. Balfour would doubtless form his own judgment

on that point; and then, still calm, sweet, with the tendency to the

reverie of the good man grossly misjudged by sinful opponents, he sat

him down.

[Sidenote: An awkward moment.]

In the midst of the exultation which the announcement of the Government

had produced in the Liberal ranks, there came a difficulty and a

humiliation. An amendment had been proposed, Mr. Gladstone had twice

opposed it, everything pointed to its ignominious rejection, and, in

view of the coming closure, everybody seemed to want rapid despatch. And

thus a division was immediately called. The House was cleared; members

rushed in, and, indeed, had already begun to pass through the lobby;

when suddenly there was a complete change of tactics; Mr. Marjoribanks,

rushing to the Treasury Bench, called upon the Government to capitulate.

The fact got out; the Government were in a minority--their forces had

not come in time, and the Tories would have beaten us if they had been

allowed to go to a division. It was one of the narrowest shaves--one of

the most uncomfortable quarters of a minute--we have had in the House of

Commons for many a long day.

[Sidenote: The fateful moment.]

But half-past five comes at last; then the discussion on the Home Rule

Bill has to come to an end, and the Speaker takes the chair. Members

think there is a look of unusual excitement on his face, that its air is

angry; and the Unionists take comfort from the idea that this step is

against his judgment. But, then, it is a matter for the House itself and

not for the decision of the chair, and so we go ahead. Mr. Morley is put

up by Mr. Gladstone to read the words of the resolution. The Old Man

himself is composedly writing that letter to the Queen which it is still

his duty daily to indite. Mr. Morley's face betrays under all its

studied calm, the excitement of the hour, and he reads every separate

announcement with a certain dramatic emphasis that brings out all the

hidden meaning; and the document is one, the reading of which lends

itself to dramatic effect and to dramatic manifestations. For each

clause winds up with the same words, at "ten of the clock," until these

words come to sound something like the burden of a song--the refrain of

a lament--the iteration of an Athanasian curse against sinners and

heretics. The House sees all this; and each side manifests emotion

according to its fashion. The Irish cheer themselves hoarse in triumph;

the Tories answer back as defiantly and loudly; and so we enter, with

clang of battle, with shouts and cheers, and hoarse cries of joy or of

rage, into the second great pitched battle on Home Rule.

CHAPTER XV.

MR. DILLON'S FORGETFULNESS.

[Sidenote: Mr. Dillon.]

Everybody who has ever met Mr. Dillon knows that he has a singularly

even and equable temper, except at the moments when he has been stung to

passion by the sight of some bitter and intolerable wrong. When,

therefore, Mr. Chamberlain made him the subject of a fierce attack on

account of a past utterance, he was dealing with a man who was as little

influenced by such attacks as anybody could well be. For days Mr.

Chamberlain had been trying to bait Mr. Dillon into speech; and for days

Mr. Dillon had positively refused to be drawn. At last it seemed to some

friends of Mr. Dillon that if he did not speak his attitude might be

misunderstood, and that he would be supposed to entertain, as part of a

settled policy, what he had really uttered on the spur of the moment and

under the influence of intolerable wrong and provocation. But when in

the last days of June Mr. Chamberlain made his attack, and Mr. Dillon

had listened to it and asked for dates, Mr. Dillon thought that the

matter would not be worth further attending to, and relapsed into his

old attitude of easy contempt.

[Sidenote: The outbreak.]

This will account for what would otherwise be inexplicable; namely,

that, having had a week to prepare his defence, Mr. Dillon should on

July 3rd have fallen into a dreadful, and, for the moment, disastrous

blunder. The truth was, Mr. Dillon had never thought of the subject for

more than a few moments between the date of the challenge and Mr.

Chamberlain's renewal of the attack, and, if he had been left free to

exercise his own judgment, would have allowed the whole thing to lapse

into the nothingness into which every such charge finally falls. On this

Monday night Mr. Chamberlain was in his most venomous mood. He had come

down to the House with the set determination to get up a row somehow or

other. There was evil in his eye; there was rancour in his voice; there

was the hoarse rage which always shows in him whenever he feels that he

has been beaten. His judgment is so shallow--his temper so rash and

violent--that some people think he actually counted that the Government

would never have dared to interfere with his obstructive plan of

campaign, and that he would have been permitted to bury the Bill under

the vast hedge of amendments. To him, then, the strong and drastic

action of the preceding week had come as a painful and most exasperating

surprise.

[Sidenote: Joe's weakness.]

It is one of the many bad turns that Joe's temper does him to always

lead him into overdoing his part. The wild outbursts of his venom--the

ferocity which he puts into his personal attacks--these things have the

effect of producing a certain amount of reaction; and thus his blows

often suffer from the very violence with which they are dealt. A real

master of Parliamentary craft, like Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Sexton, has

learned the lesson--the lesson which all orators of all ages have

learned--that there is nothing so deadly as moderation; that he destroys

the effectiveness of a passion by tearing it to pieces, and that you are

really effective when you have complete control of your temper, your

voice and your language.

[Sidenote: Mitchelstown.]

Mr. Dillon, rising--pale, high-strung, and nervous--was a sympathetic

sight, and the House was ready to listen to him with the greatest

attention. The Old Man was specially interested. Whenever nowadays, when

his hearing has become somewhat defective, he wants particularly to

hear a speech, he has to change his place; usually, as everybody knows,

he sits exactly opposite the box on the Speaker's table. This evening he

went to the last seat on the Treasury Bench--the seat nearest to the

spot from which Mr. Dillon was about to speak, and with his hand to his

ear he prepared himself to catch every word that Mr. Dillon was about to

utter, and the speech of Mr. Dillon was--in spite of the halting tones

which excitement, unpreparedness, the sense of his responsibility

produced--singularly effective. The passionate and transparent sincerity

of the man--the sense of all the years of suffering through which he

passed--the recollection of all the risks he has run in the great

contemporary Irish Revolution--all these things spoke in his favour.

Especially was he effective when he described the circumstances under

which he had delivered the speech, a passage from which had been

incriminated by Mr. Chamberlain. He had been told just half-an-hour

before he rose to speak, of how a poor mother had been torn from her

babe; how the two had been taken over a long journey together, and had

both been finally lodged in the same cell. And he asked with a

passionate thrill in his voice, that carried away the House with him,

whether anybody else under the same circumstances would not have

protested in language of violence and vehemence against the cruelty and

official brutality which allowed such things to be. Would not anybody

have protested that the officials who were guilty of these things had

not to look to reward or promotion from a popular Irish Government.

[Sidenote: The fatal mistake.]

So far, Mr. Dillon had the House completely with him. He also scored for

a second or two. He went on to remark that he had been under the

influence of the massacre at Mitchelstown; but scarcely had these words

proceeded from his lips than a look of dismay passed over the faces of

his Irish colleagues. Close beside him were several men who, like

himself, had stood on the platform of the historic square when the

police descended upon the meeting, and which ended in the death of

three innocent men. They at once perceived that Mr. Dillon, by some

break of memory, had made a mistake in his dates. The incriminating

speech had been delivered in December, 1886, and the Mitchelstown

massacre took place in September, 1887. If the Irish members had not

perceived this blunder immediately they would soon have been brought to

a sense of coming disaster by the movements on the opposite side.

[Sidenote: Chamberlain on the spring.]

Mr. T.W. Russell is always at the service of Mr. Chamberlain at such a

moment. A platform speaker by training and by years of professional

work, accustomed to make most of his case against Home Rule depend on

the characters, the words, the acts of the Irish members, he has, of

course, at his fingers' ends, all the useful extracts of the last

thirteen years. At once he was seen to rush excitedly from the House.

Every Irishman knew at once that he was going to the library to

reinforce his memory with regard to the date of Mitchelstown. A murmur

arose on the Irish Benches; slips of paper were passed up to Mr. Dillon

to recall to him the facts of the case; but, either in the hurry and

excitement, or because he did not appreciate the situation immediately,

Mr. Dillon went on with his speech--unconscious of the abyss that opened

up before him. Meantime, Mr. Chamberlain--pale, excited, his face torn

with the workings of gratified hatred and coming triumph--sat forward in

his seat, his eyeglass shining from afar, eagerness in every look, pose,

movement.

[Sidenote: Chamberlain pounces.]

At last Mr. Russell was back in his place; it did not require much

second sight to see that his quest had been successful, and that he had

brought to Mr. Chamberlain the ammunition he required in order to slay

John Dillon. The moment Mr. Dillon sat down, Mr. Chamberlain was on his

feet. He worked up to the situation with some skill; but, after all,

with that overdone passion which, as I have already said, spoils some of

his greatest effects--he did not expose the mistake in his first few

sentences. He worked up the agony, so to speak. First he recalled to the

Liberals--whose hatred to him he feels and returns with interest--the

fact that they had cheered Mr. Dillon's allusion to the effect

Mitchelstown had had on him in provoking the violence of his speech. And

then when he had created his situation, he pounced down on the House

with the climax--the speech had been delivered in 1886, the Mitchelstown

tragedy had taken place in the following year. It would be idle to deny

that Mr. Chamberlain had then one of the most triumphant moments of his

life. It was a small point, after all, and, as everybody soon knew, it

was all the result of a natural and a perfectly honest mistake. But the

House of Commons is not particular in weighing things in judicial scales

at moments of intense political passion. There rose from the Tory and

the Unionist Benches one of the longest, fiercest, most triumphant

shouts that was ever heard in the House of Commons. But then, as I again

must say, and as will soon be seen, the passion was overdone, and a

swift retribution came by-and-bye. For the moment, however, it was

giddily, dazzlingly triumphant, and Joe had one of the few moments of

his life which were unrelieved by disaster.

[Sidenote: A diversion.]

It was at this moment--and, curiously enough, his victory was very soon

dashed to the ground--that Mr. Harrington, one of the Parnellites,

struck in with a blow. In Parliamentary, as in other tactics, one of the

wisest expedients--especially if things are going rather wrong with

yourself--is to carry the war into the enemies' country. And this is

exactly what Mr. Harrington did. He turned upon Joe and denounced him

for seeking at one time to obtain the alliance of these very Irish

members whom now he was denouncing. He accused him of sending

ambassadors to them when they were in prison, and, in short, brought Joe

face to face with an almost forgotten period of his history. Then he was

almost a Home Ruler in profession, and looked to the Irish members as a

portion of the force he would by-and-bye marshal in his own army.

[Sidenote: A quid pro quo.]

Joe grew pale. It is a curious fact that, whenever any allusion is made

to this special period of his life, Mr. Chamberlain becomes particularly

disturbed; possibly, it is that he is conscious of the rash things he

has said at this period; possibly, it is that it can be proved to the

world that he was at this period in favour of the principles and the men

he now so loudly denounces. Whatever the reason, it is perfectly

certain, if you want to put Mr. Chamberlain into a rage, and what

sailors call a funk, allude to the period of Parnell's imprisonment in

Kilmainham, and Mr. Duignan's letter on the Irish question. The

transformation from the exalted look a few moments before to the pale,

cowed aspect which Mr. Chamberlain wore was one of the most sudden

transformations I have ever seen in the House of Commons. He could

scarcely sit in his seat while Mr. Harrington was speaking; again and

again he rose to interrupt him altogether, and gave signs of unusual

excitement and disturbance. But Mr. Harrington is a deft and tenacious

combatant. In spite of all attempts to stop him, in spite of the

tremendous uproar raised by the Unionists and Tories, he managed to get

out what he had to say. He brought Mr. Chamberlain face to face with

this spectre of his dead past.

[Sidenote: Mr. Balfour does not score.]

Meantime, Mr. Balfour made a great mistake. He had listened to the

speech of Mr. Chamberlain, and had been one of those who had joined in

the cheers at the exposure of Mr. Dillon's accidental mistake. There he

should have left it, but, carried away by the hope of driving the point

home against a political enemy, he needs must add something to what Mr.

Chamberlain had said. Now Mr. Balfour is in many points very superior to

Joe. He should leave personal vituperation to him: he is more active,

defter, and more willing to do such dirty work. Moreover, it is in the

recollection of the members that, in the Coercionist struggle, Mr.

Balfour seemed to have towards Mr. Dillon an unusual amount of personal

animosity. Speaking with want of grace and personal courtesy, which are

things, I am bound to say, uncommon with him, he accused Mr. Dillon of

deliberate and conscious hypocrisy. This also was a tactical blunder,

and will largely account for the transformation following, to which I am

going to refer.

[Sidenote: The transformation.]

The House on the following day, July 4th, was very still when Mr. Dillon

rose--evidently to refer to the incident of the previous night. His

address was quiet, brief, and graceful. With charming modesty, he

acknowledged the mistake he had made, and explained how, in running over

in memory the hundreds of speeches he had delivered, he had confounded

one speech with another. He was unable to understand how his memory,

which never before had played him false, had done him this ill turn, and

he appealed to the House generally, and declared that there was not even

amongst his bitter political foes one who would think him capable of

trying to palm off on the House a speech which could be so palpably and

so readily exposed. In these few sentences, Mr. Dillon brought before

the House his strange, picturesque, and chequered career. His oratory

was such that the explanation was considered the best ever given in the

House of Commons.

[Sidenote: Joe is absent.]

This was a recovery of some ground lost on the previous night. But there

was even better to come. Mr. Harrington's accuracy and veracity as to

Mr. Chamberlain's dealings with the Irish members had been challenged,

as I have said, by Mr. Chamberlain, and he now rose to read the historic

letter of Mr. Duignan, which, he claimed, justified his account. Several

attempts were made to stop Mr. Harrington, and the Tories during this

were decidedly annoyed and embarrassed because Mr. Chamberlain happened

not to be in his place. But doggedly and persistently Mr. Harrington

held to his ground, and at last the Speaker allowed him to read the

letter. The reading of the letter led to various scenes, because it was

one of those balanced utterances in which Mr. Chamberlain used to try to

hold one foot in the Unionist and to place the other in the Home Rule

camp. There were speeches about the County Councils, and there had been

Unionist and Tory cheers in relief; but when immediately afterwards

there were allusions to Home Rule, very little different in scope or

character from that proposed by Mr. Gladstone, there was a triumphant

rejoinder from the Liberal and Home Rule Benches. Austen Chamberlain,

excited, nervous, angered, flitted to and fro in the attempt to gather

forces to defend his absent parent. At last Mr. Courtney took up his

case. There was not very much in what he said, and while he was speaking

Mr. Chamberlain entered the House. He was pale, excited, and unnerved.

He endeavoured to carry the whole thing by a jauntiness which was too

easy to see through. Mr. Courtney had been waving furiously a telegram

towards the Speaker, and asked that he might have the privilege of

reading it. Austen Chamberlain snatched the telegram from Mr. Courtney,

and gave it to his father just as he had taken his seat. Mr. Chamberlain

had not a moment to spare; he had just time to glance at the contents of

the telegram when he rose to speak, and all he did was to read the

telegram, which was a confirmation by Mr. Duignan of the general

accuracy of the previous evening. This was a score for Joe, and his

friends were delighted to recover something of their lost spirit.

[Mr. Conybeare and the Speaker.]

Mr. Conybeare had written a letter to the _Chronicle_ denouncing the

Speaker. Mr. Tritton, a Tory member, insisted the letter should be read,

and this gave the Speaker one of those few opportunities which his

position allows him. In disclaiming this charge he showed his great

powers of oratory and the splendid and thrilling notes of his fine

voice. He defended himself at once from the charge of undue partiality

with strong passion and deep emotion, which lie hidden beneath his deep

reserve. With a face ghastly almost in its greyness, in its deepening

glows and manifest passion, he repudiated the charge of unfairness; he

vehemently struck his hand on the order paper which he held, and as he

neared to the end of his little speech there was a ring in his voice

dangerously near a sob or a tear. It is on such occasions that Mr.

Gladstone's sonorous and splendid diction and delivery come most to the

front; beginning a little awkwardly, hesitatingly, he warmed as he went

along, and there came to him the strange power of collecting his

thoughts and measuring his language which long years of Parliamentary

training has made a second nature. The House listened--rapt, hushed,

spellbound. And then there was no more to be said beyond a few

perfunctory observations from Mr. Balfour and the dismissal of the whole

subject.

[Sidenote: Another scene.]

And now we were once more in the thick of a fierce and passionate

encounter. Mr. Arnold Forster had an amendment, the effect of which was

to remove the exercise of the prerogative of mercy from the hands of the

Irish members to those of the English Secretary of State. Into this

innocent amendment he sought to drag discussion of the doings of the

Land League twelve years ago, and concentrated on Mr. Sexton a violent

attack. He was not allowed to proceed to the end of his chapter. The

charge was heinous, vile, and such as has rarely been introduced in the

House in such a fashion, and soon the temper rose to a fever heat. Mr.

Sexton is a dangerous man to tackle in this guise.

In justifiable rage, quivering with wrath, he yet managed to preserve

that cold and even tenour of language so perfect to his heart and his

words. Again and again the Tory and Unionist party cheer for Mr.

Balfour, Mr. Courtney, and Mr. Chamberlain, but Mr. Sexton is not a man

to suffer such a statement to go unchallenged, and he succeeded in

grasping the whole thing and stamped the charge with the terms, base

and infamous. This led to other scenes, men rising and talking together.

Mr. Chamberlain turned fierce in fore front. Again and again Mr.

Gladstone arose to try and end the scene, and again and again he was

prevented by Mr. T.W. Russell at one point, Mr. Chamberlain at another,

and Mr. Balfour at a third, to seek to bring the struggle back to the

fierce temper it was about to leave. But the Old Man at last got up, and

in measured language and tones which betrayed profound emotion, he

scathingly denounced the attack of Mr. Forster as wanton and

mischievous. Here again there was another uproar. The Old Man pursued

his way, but Mr. Chamberlain again tried to get Mr. Sexton called to

order, but the charge had been too coarse, and Mr. Mellor declined to

interfere.

CHAPTER XVI.

REDUCED MAJORITIES.

[Sidenote: The week before.]

On Friday, July 7th, we just entered on the fringe of the ninth clause.

The ninth clause had all along been held to be, perhaps, the very

gravest rock ahead of the Government. This is the clause which regulates

the position of the Irish members at Westminster after Home Rule has

been passed. There were as many plans for settling this question as

there were members of the House of Commons, and all plans were alike in

being illogical, unsymmetrical, and, therefore, liable to attack from a

dozen different quarters. Already within a few days of each other, there

had been two divisions, on which everybody felt it to be quite possible

that the Government would go down, and that we should once more go back

face to face with the country and probably with a new and a stronger

Tory Government than ever. The first occasion was the clause dealing

with a Second Chamber. Then a certain number of irreconcilable Radicals,

in their hatred of all Second Chambers, voted against the Government and

reduced their majority to 15. This was a very tight squeeze; but, after

all, everybody had been prepared for it, and when the hour came, we all

knew pretty well where we should be. There might be one or two men more

or less in the Tory lobby, but we had sized them up carefully. When,

however, July 19th, and the ninth clause came we were face to face with

a very different state of affairs. Then we had to face absolute

uncertainty--and uncertainty not in one, but almost every part of the

House. And the curious thing about it all was, that this uncertainty was

aggravated by a little fact which had entered into nobody's

calculations, and this was the highly technical rule with regard to the

manner in which questions are put when the House is in committee.

[Sidenote: Technicalities.]

I despair of ever being able to make this matter clear to an outsider;

and, indeed, to be quite honest, I am not always sure that I understand

the affair myself. It will probably be sufficient for my purpose if I

say that the chairman has to put an amendment in such a way that

sometimes you find you are really precluded from voting on the direct

question which you wish to challenge. You are within the ring-fence of a

technical rule, which compels you to fight your issue there and not one

inch outside of it. This often means that questions are raised in the

most indirect way--that you seem to be voting for one thing while you

really mean another, and that if you do not vote that way, you cannot

vote any other. So it happened on this occasion. And we drifted about

for the best way of raising the question of the presence of the Irish

members, and the Government were for a while in a state of absolute and

painful uncertainty. Then came one of those desultory conversations on

points of order, in which so large a body as the House of Commons cannot

shine--one man suggesting one method, one man another; half-a-dozen

different methods proposed in as many minutes by half-a-dozen different

members.

[Sidenote: 103 v. 80.]

At last Mr. Redmond seemed to hit off the situation by a proposal to

omit a couple of sub-sections in the ninth clause. But Mr. Redmond had

scarcely spoken when the House found itself in an extraordinary and most

embarrassing dilemma. The object of Mr. Redmond was plain enough; what

he desired to do was to retain the Irish members in the Imperial

Parliament in their present, that is to say, in their full,

strength--103 they are now, 103 he wanted them to remain. The position

of the Government was equally clear. With emphatic language--with a

superabundance of argument--Mr. Gladstone stated his conviction that the

Irish members should not remain in such large numbers and that the

number should be 80. This was all clear enough; but what about the

position of all the other parties in the House?

[Sidenote: Tot homines, tot sententiæ.]

At first sight, it would appear that this ought to be very clear. The

Tories and the Unionists had several amendments on the paper. One wanted

the Irish members reduced to 48, one wanted to have them reduced to 40,

and several of them desired that they should be reduced still

further--in fact, should reach the irreducible minimum of none at all.

It was assumed, of course, that gentlemen who had thus indicated their

desire for the reduction of the Irish members, or for their

disappearance altogether, would vote against a proposition which asked

that they should remain in full force. If this course were adopted, Mr.

Redmond would be crushed under a combination of the Liberals, who wanted

the numbers to be 80, and the Tories who wanted the Irish members to

disappear altogether; but in these days, and with such an Opposition as

we have now in the House of Commons, it is not possible to make any

calculations on what course we would adopt. To the amazement of the

House--above all things to the amazement of Mr. Gladstone--who has not

yet entirely got over the traditions of the past, and, therefore,

over-sanguine expectations as to the scruples of his opponents--Mr.

Chamberlain and Mr. Balfour both announced that they were ready to go

into the same lobby as Mr. Redmond. And so those who wanted all the

Irish members, and those who wanted none, were both going to vote

exactly the same way.

[Sidenote: A bolt from the blue.]

For a moment everybody was staggered by this declaration; and it

produced a combination which anybody could forecast, and for which

nobody was prepared. There came accordingly something like a panic over

the House. Here we were face to face with a Ministerial crisis, with

doom and the abyss and the end of all things. Unexpectedly, in a moment,

without a second's warning, this state of things led to a phenomenon

which belongs to the House of Commons alone. Councils of war are usually

held in the silence and secrecy and beneath the impenetrable walls of

the council chamber. But sudden councils of war, called for by

unexpected events, have to be held in the open in the House of Commons.

The world--the world of strangers, of ambassadors, of peers, of ladies,

of the constituents, and, above all, the world of watchful, scornful,

vindictive enemies--can look on as though the leaders of the parties

were bees working in a glass hive. And it is impossible for even the

best trained men to keep their air and manners in such dread

circumstances from betraying the seriousness and excitement and awe

which the gravity of the events are exciting in them.

[Sidenote: Mr. Gladstone's attitude.]

On the Treasury Bench there was a good deal of excitement, but it was

pretty well repressed: and in the midst of it all is the face of Mr.

Gladstone, over-pale, with a strange glitter in the eyes that made them

look unnaturally large, two jets of lambent and almost dazzling flame,

but otherwise very composed, deadly calm. On the Irish Benches the

excitement was more tense, for their course was even more difficult than

that of the Government. The Government had stated their decision that

they wanted only eighty members. But there was an Irish member, a leader

of a party which seeks to claim Irish support as a better Irish party

than the other, proposing that Ireland should have her full total of

members. The Irish members naturally would be inclined to support their

countrymen, if not to seek to keep the Irish representation as high as

it could possibly be.

[Sidenote: A splendid gambler.]

On the other hand, if all the Irish members went the same way it was all

up with the Government. Some fifty to seventy British Liberals adopt the

same policy as the Irish members with regard to the Irish question and

the Home Rule Bill, and if the Irish members only give the word, they

also would vote with Mr. Redmond, and the Government would be "snowed

under," to use an expressive Americanism, a majority of upwards of two

hundred against them. Mr. Gladstone had evidently made up his mind that

this was the situation he would have to face, and played his last, his

supreme, his desperate card. You could see that he himself felt that

this was the kind of card he was playing from his look as he played it.

There was outward calmness in the face, there was the same evenness of

tone in the voice; he built up his case with the same unbroken command

of his language and ideas as is his usual characteristic. His statement

of his position was admirable in its lucidity, its temper, and its

courage. But he was excited. Just as he rose up, Sir William Harcourt

jumped up, and in a state of impatience and excitement that was

palpable, asked for something. It was a glass of water for Mr.

Gladstone. The glass of water was brought in; it was put in front of Mr.

Gladstone; he sipped it just as he was about to start on his perilous

oratorical voyage, and then, clearing his throat, he made the fateful

announcement which possibly was to wreck his measure and himself. And

the statement came to this: If the Government were defeated, it would be

by a combination of different parties, but they would all agree in

supporting 103 as against 80 Irish members; and if they did that, why

the House was master. This was ambiguous, and yet it was pretty plain.

The Government declined to accept as a vote of want of confidence in

them a majority which was obtained by so dishonest and treacherous a

combination as men voting together who were at such opposite poles of

thought; and the Government would just checkmate the little game by

accepting the 103 members as what the House preferred to the Government

plan of 80.

[Sidenote: The fall of the flag.]

There was a gleam of almost sardonic triumph in the Old Man's eye as he

sat down, having shot this bolt; and he looked as if he had thoroughly

discomfited his enemies. But his enemies were not so easily discomfited.

Treacherous, base, unscrupulous, call it what he liked, they were not

going to miss the opportunity of baiting him: and Mr. Chamberlain's pale

face wore a deadlier pallor. There was even a colder and fiercer ring

than usual in his clear, cruel voice; his always saturnine look deepened

as he seemed to grasp beforehand his great and long delayed hour of

vengeance. Mr. Balfour adopted the same tactics. In favour of 103

members? Not at all--the vote would mean nothing of that kind--it would

simply mean that they were opposed to the plan of the Government; in

short, there was the issue quite plain. The Tories and the Unionists

would vote black was white, wrong was right. This way one moment, the

other way the next--they would do anything, provided only they could

turn the Government out, defeat the Bill, and humiliate the Old Man. And

so the situation grew more difficult every moment.

For it was now plain that the Government were most certain to be beaten,

and that if they were beaten, there must be an end of Home Rule. It

might be good Parliamentary tactics to say that the Government would

accept the decision of the House, but everybody knows what moral

authority, what reality of strength, there is in a Government which has

been "snowed under" by a majority of 200.

[Sidenote: Mr. Sexton makes the running.]

It will now be understood what tremendous issues rested on the speech

which Mr. Sexton rose to deliver. In moments of stress and difficulty he

is the man always selected by his colleagues to state the Irish case.

Never in his chequered and stormy early career did that wonderful

Parliamentarian have a task more difficult than that by which he was

now confronted. In front of him was the Government in the very panic of

impending ruin. He had only to look across the floor of the House, and

he could see the pallid face of that mighty statesman who lives so high

in the hearts and affections of the people whom Mr. Sexton represents,

and who at that moment was in his hour of agony, if not of final and

irretrievable ruin. Behind the Prime Minister were other men--equally

eager to hear what he had to say--that sturdy band of Radicals, mostly

from Scotland, who only wanted the word to desert their own leader and

follow the guidance of the Irish members. And behind Mr. Sexton was the

grimmest enemy of all--the men from his own country, who were resolved,

on this occasion, to push the demand of Ireland to the extreme point,

and who held that he would betray the Irish cause if he backed, not

them, but Mr. Gladstone and the British Government.

[Sidenote: And takes the lead.]

It required all the dexterity, all the coolness, all the splendid

equanimity and courage of the man of genius at such a fateful hour to

keep his head. Mr. Sexton was equal to the occasion. He spoke slowly,

and there was a hush in the House to catch his every syllable, for his

words were the harbingers of fate. As he spoke so would be decided one

of the most momentous and indeed tragical of human issues. He spoke, I

say, slowly--but at the same time it was evident that he had his mind

well fixed on the end which he wished to reach. Nothing adds so much to

the effectiveness of oratory as the sense that the man who is addressing

you, is thinking at the very moment he is speaking. You have the sense

of watching the visible working of his inner mind; and you are far more

deeply impressed than by the glib facility which does not pause, does

not stumble, does not hesitate, because he does not stop to think. Many

people, reading so much about Mr. Sexton's oratory, will be under the

impression that he is a very rapid and fluent speaker. He is nothing of

the kind. He speaks with a great slowness, grave deliberation, and there

are often long and sometimes even trying pauses between his sentences.

He could not conceal on this great occasion the anxiety and the

seriousness of the situation; but the mind was splendidly clear, the

language as well chosen as though he were sitting in a room and holding

discourse to a few admiring friends; and what Mr. Sexton had to say was,

that he would not go into the same lobby with Chamberlain and Balfour in

order to defeat the Government; in short, that he was going to vote with

Mr. Gladstone. A long-drawn sigh of relief. The Government is saved.

[Sidenote: The field unsteady.]

But hush--not yet. There are still some of the hard Radicals from

Scotland who have never wavered in the idea that the Irish members ought

to remain at their full total. They have been partially relieved by what

Mr. Sexton had said. But then Scotchmen are proverbially tenacious of

opinion; and not even his appeal--joined to the appeal of their

leader--will altogether change the purpose of those rugged sons of

bonnie Scotland. And so, Mr. Shaw, the member for Galashiels, gets up to

ask a question. He plainly declares that according to the answer given

to this question, his vote would be given for or against the Government.

So we are still in all the agonies of possible delay, for we know that

seven Parnellites will go against the Government--that counts fourteen

on a division; and if only seven or ten more go the same way, there is a

majority against Mr. Gladstone, and we are lost. Mr. Mellor has to

answer this fateful question, and everybody cries "Order, order," which

is the House of Commons way of saying that people are very anxious to

hear what is about to be said. Mr. Mellor gives an answer that satisfies

Mr. Shaw. Mr. Dalziel--another sturdy Scotch Radical--is also satisfied;

and so we have all the Liberal vote, with the single exception of

Labby--who quickly--furtively--almost shamefacedly--rushes off into the

Tory lobby.

[Sidenote: Hoisting the numbers.]

And now the division takes place. There have been several

speeches--usually of a minute each--before the final hour comes; but we

are all so anxious to know what fate is in store for us, that we cannot

stand the strain any longer. The division--the division--let us know the

worst. Be it good, or be it ill--let it come at once. The Whips from the

two lobbies enter almost simultaneously--this shows plainly enough that

it has been a very near thing; then a dreadful hush as the numbers are

announced; we have won--aye, but we have by only fourteen! There is a

burst of cheers from the Irish Benches; Sir William Harcourt laughs

aloud in his triumph; the composure of the Old Man's face remains

unchanged; you see he has gone through a great many things like this;

and that great heart and sane mind are prepared for any fate. Mr.

Chamberlain says nothing; but looking into the recesses of his amendment

paper, attempts to hide the choking rage of disappointment that has come

over him at this final defeat of his brightest hopes of trampling his

former friend and his former chief in the dust.

[Sidenote: A squabble.]

And now comes the squalid sequel to all this glorious and splendid

fight--the disorderly--the chaotic--the anarchic scene of the 11th of

July. The whole thing began simply enough. Mr. Brodrick, the son of an

Irish landlord--a very light, though very serious young man--managed in

the course of his speech to speak of the people from whom he springs as

"impecunious and garrulous." At first nobody took any notice of what was

probably a mere mauvaise plaisanterie; and the incident would have

passed altogether had not Mr. Brodrick immediately afterwards made a

more direct appeal to the Irish Members. This elicited from Mr. Sexton

the retort that he need not make any appeal to the Irish Benches after

the "grossly rude" allusion he had made to the Irish people. On this

there was a mild hubbub on the Tory Benches. The House was very thin and

very listless, and really not in the mood to take anything very

tragically. But Mr. Sexton resolutely refused to withdraw unless Mr.

Brodrick gave the example. Mr. Mellor then--acting somewhat

precipitately--ruled that Mr. Sexton was out of order, and should

withdraw his words.

[Sidenote: Mr. Sexton defies the chair.]

This created a new situation. Mr. Sexton had now to fight, not Mr.

Brodrick, not even Mr. Balfour--but the chair; and to fight the chair is

to enter into a contest with the Grand Llama of the House of Commons.

Meantime the House had filled; and every nook and cranny was occupied; a

large number of members were standing up; and there was that intense

thrill of excitement which always forecasts a great outburst, and the

outburst came when Mr. Sexton--resolute and composed--gave it plainly to

be understood that he would not obey the ruling of the chair; and that

he must first get an apology from Mr. Brodrick, as the original

offender, before Mr. Brodrick got any apology from him. Then was the

cyclone let loose; and there began a series of the wildest, most

violent, most angry, and disorderly scenes I have ever witnessed. Scores

of members were on their legs at the same time; men hitherto quiet,

composed, and good-natured, began to raise cries hoarse with rage, and

finally four or five hundred voices were united in producing the

deafening and discordant din of angry and contradictory voices. Nor was

this all. In some parts of the House men began directly to assail each

other--to exchange language of taunt, and insult, and defiance; and, in

more than one corner, there were the signs of impending physical

conflict. The one relief of the situation was that some men kept their

heads and looked on in sadness, while others, seeing only the comic side

of the situation, smiled upon it all.

[Sidenote: Gladstone to the rescue.]

Mr. Gladstone, who had been away to dinner, had meantime entered, and a

look of pain and solicitude crossed his white face. There is so much of

innate gentleness--of inexhaustible kindliness, and of high-bred and

scholastic spirit beneath all the vehemence of his political temper and

the frenzied energy of his political life--that for such scenes he has

never any stomach; and they always bring to his face that same look of

shock and pain and humiliation. And he it was who finally saved the

situation. Several times Mr. Brodrick would have been willing to

withdraw, but Mr. Balfour was resolved to get Mr. Gladstone and Mr.

Sexton into a difficulty, to convict Mr. Sexton of disobeying the chair,

to compel Mr. Gladstone to take action against his most useful friend

and most powerful ally. Over and over again, then, he refused to allow

Mr. Brodrick to get rid of the whole situation by withdrawing his

language, and so enabling Mr. Sexton to follow the example. Meantime,

Mr. Mellor had ruled that Mr. Sexton had been guilty of gross disorder,

and had called upon him to leave the House. Mr. Sexton had steadily

refused, basing his refusal on the demand that there had been no vote of

the House. The point was this: There are two rules for dealing with

disorder. Under the one a member is named, and then a division takes

place, in which the House may refuse or consent to the suspension of a

member. Under the other rule, the presiding officer has the right to

suspend on his own motion, and without any appeal to the House. The

latter rule was that under which Mr. Mellor acted. Mr. Sexton demanded

that he should be treated under the other rule, believing that if a

division had taken place the majority of the House, or at least a very

big minority, would have refused to sanction the action of the Chairman.

This would have meant that Mr. Mellor would have been censured, and

thereby compelled to resign the Chairmanship.

Mr. Gladstone, I say, saved the situation. In language of touching

delicacy and grace, he appealed to Mr. Sexton to obey the chair. Mr.

Sexton at first would not yield; but when the appeal was renewed--when

it was backed by all the resources of that thrilling and vibratory voice

of Mr. Gladstone, his stubborn resolve gave way. He rose from his

seat--several Liberal members got up and waved their hats; the Irishmen

followed their example. And then Mr. Brodrick was able to make his

tardy apology, and the matter for the moment was ended.

[Sidenote: The interfering Milman.]

There had been one little scene fiercer almost than any of the others.

When Mr. Mellor proceeded to call Mr. Sexton to order, Mr. Milman, the

clerk at the table, handed to him, with some appearance of ostentation

and of eagerness, the rule which allowed him to compel Mr. Sexton's

withdrawal without an appeal to the House. This provoked some now

fiercely excited Irishmen to an outburst of blind rage. They shouted at

Mr. Milman fiercely, desperately--called upon him to leave the Chairman

alone, to take the chair himself; and Mr. Sexton made a bitter little

speech to the effect that it was Mr. Milman's malignant interference

which had produced his suspension. It was thought that on Wednesday this

matter would be again raised; and even as early as noon there was a big

array of members, expecting another outburst. But Mr. Balfour held his

peace. Mr. Sexton asked a formal question, and gave notice of a motion

of censure on the Chairman. Mr. Mellor took the chair amid a wild

outburst of Tory cheers; and we got back to the tranquil consideration

of clause nine, and to a delightful, good-humoured historical speech by

Mr. Swift McNeill on the representation of Trinity College, Dublin.

[Sidenote: Divisions.]