It will be seen at once that a party of malcontents is especially powerful in a Parliament which has in hand the greatest task of our time, and which on the other side has a majority which revolt of even a small number can at any moment turn into a dishonoured and impotent minority. Such being the material, a nice little plot was concocted by which a certain number of young members, full of all that vague distrust of existing ministries which belongs to ardent young Radicalism, were to be induced to give a vote against Mr. Gladstone's proposal to take away the time of private members. And it is reported that one member of the Liberal party had begun operations as many as four weeks before Mr. Gladstone's Bill came on, and had tried to extort a number of pledges, the full meaning of which would only come upon the unhappy people who made them when they had endangered or destroyed the best of modern Ministries.

I think I have now said enough to explain what I am going to relate. Mr. Gladstone explained his proposal; which briefly was, that in order to get on with Home Rule it was necessary to take the time of private members. As will have been seen, the meaning of this would have been to have swept away at once all the private motions in which members were interested. When the motion came to be discussed, there was a very curious phenomenon. Everybody had been reading in the morning papers the chorus of disapproval in which the Tory press had been denouncing the leadership of the Tory party, liberals had been repeating to each other with delight the verdict of the chief Tory organ—the Standard newspaper—that the Tory party had been out-manoeuvred and beaten at every point in the struggle, and that the portentous promises of the recess had been utterly baffled by the superior judgment, the better concerted tactics, and, above all, by the unexpected solidity and cohesion of the Liberal party.

That all this had produced its effect on the Tory party as well was soon evident. An old campaigner in the House of Commons can soon tell when a party has been organized for the purpose of Obstruction. There is a feverishness; there are ample notes; there is a rising of many members at the same time when the moment comes to catch the Speaker's eye. Other indications presented themselves. Mr. Seton-Karr is, personally, one of the kindliest of men—cheery, good-natured, full of the easy give-and-take of political struggle; but even he himself would not claim to be a Parliamentary orator. But on February 27th, he, as much as everybody else, must have been surprised to find that his utterances, which, in truth, were stumbling enough, should at every point be punctuated by a deep bellow of cheers such as might have delighted the most trained and the most accomplished orators in the House. The House itself was at first taken aback by this outburst of deep-throated and raucous cheers, and after it had sufficiently recovered from its surprise discovered that it all came from one bench—the front bench below the gangway. On this bench there were gathered together a number of the younger members of the Tory party.

At once it was seen what had taken place; the Tories, stung to action by the taunts of their own press, had concerted a new system of tactics. And one portion of these tactics was to introduce into the House of Commons a phenomenon new to even its secular and varied experience—namely, an organized claque. It was really just as if one were in a French theatre. Uniformly, regularly, with a certain mechanical and hollow effect underneath its bellowings, the group below the gangway uttered its war notes. Beyond all question, recognizable by the unmistakable family features, it was there—the organized theatrical claque on the floor of the British House of Commons. There were other indications of the transformation on which the Tories were determined. When Mr. Seton-Karr sate down after a palpably obstructive speech, Mr. Bartley got up, and several other Tories at the same time. Mr. Bartley is not an attractive personality. He has a very strong rather than pleasant or intellectual face. There is plenty of bulldog tenacity in it—plenty of animal courage, plenty of self-confidence; but it has none of the rays of a strong intelligence, and not many glimpses of kindliness or sweetness of nature. It is in the work of obstruction that one sees temperament rather than intellect in the House of Commons. Obstruction does not call for very high intellectual powers, though, undoubtedly, obstruction can at the same time display the highest powers.

For instance, Mr. Sexton made his first reputation in the House of Commons by a speech three hours in duration, which was regarded by the majority as an intentional waste of time and an obstruction of a hateful Bill, but which everybody had to hear from the sheer force of its splendid reasoning, orderly arrangement of material, and now and then bursts of the best form of Parliamentary eloquence. But the obstructionist wants, as a rule, strength of character rather than of oratory—as witness the extraordinary work in obstruction done by the late Mr. Biggar, who, by nature, was one of the most inarticulate of men. It was because Biggar had nerves of steel—a courage that did not know the meaning of fear, and that remained calm in the midst of a cyclone of repugnance, hatred, and menace. Mr. Bartley, then, has the character for the obstructive, and he rose blithely on the waves of the Parliamentary tempest. But he had to face a continuous roar of interruption and hostility from the Irish benches—those converted sinners who have abjured sack, and have become the most orderly and loyal, and steadfast of Ministerialist bulwarks. And now and then when the roar of interruption became loud and almost deafening, there arose from the Tory bench below the gangway that strange new claque which on that Monday night I heard for the first time in the House of Commons.

One other figure rose out of the sea of upturned and vehement faces at this moment of stress and storm. When the Irish Members were shouting disapproval there suddenly gleamed upon them a face from the front Opposition bench. It was a startling—I might almost say a menacing exhibition. It was the face of Mr. James Lowther. I find that few people have as keen an appreciation of this remarkable man as I have. In his own party he passes more or less for a mere comedian—indeed, I might say, low comedian, in the professional and not in the offensive sense. His tenure of the Chief Secretaryship of Ireland is looked back upon, in an age that has known Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, Mr. Balfour, and Mr. John Morley, as a sublime and daring joke by Disraeli which belongs to, and could only happen in an epoch when sober England was ready to allow her Oriental juggler and master to play any kind of Midsummer's Night's Dream pranks even with the sternest realities of human life. Yet sometimes the thought occurs to me that if he were a little more articulate, or, perchance, if the time came when a democracy had to be met, not with bursts of Parliamentary eloquence, but with shot and shell, and the determination to kill or be killed, the leadership of the party of the aristocracy would fall from the effeminate hands of the supersubtle and cultivated Mr. Balfour into the firm and tight grip of the rugged, uncultured country gentleman who sits remote and neglected close to him. There are the tightness and firmness of a death-trap in the large, strong mouth, a dangerous gleam in the steady eyes, infinite powers of firmness, inflexibility, and of even cruelty in the whole expression, not in the least softened, but rather heightened and exalted by the pretty constant smile—the smile that indicates the absence alike of the heat of passion or the touch of pity, and that speaks aloud of the unquestioning and dogged resolve of the aristocrat to fight for privilege to the death.

"Ah, what a cruel face!" exclaimed an Irish Member by my side as Mr. Lowther turned back and shouted, "Order, order!" at the Irish benches—the good-humoured smile absent for a few moments, and revelations given into abyssmal depths. But Mr. Lowther soon recovered himself, smiled with his usual blandness, and once more dropped the hood over his inner nature. But it was a moment which brought its revelations to any keen observer; especially if he could have seen the answering looks from a pair of blazing Celtic eyes—also characteristic in their way of all the passion, rage, and secular intrepidity of the smaller and weaker race that has carried on a struggle for seven centuries—over battlefields strewn with the conquered dead—past gallows stained by heroic blood—past prisons and hulks where noble hearts ate themselves wearily and slowly to death. It was as in one glance all the contrast, the antipathies, the misunderstanding which had separated one type of Irishmen from one type of Englishmen through hundreds of years.

These are somewhat remote reflections from the squat figure, the harsh and grating voice, and the commonplace rhetoric of Mr. Bartley—so far can fancy and insight lead one astray in that great stage of Titanic passions which is spread on the floor of the House of Commons. And what significance of great historic issues and reminiscences there were in the scene were likewise lost on Dr. Hunter. To him the universe at the moment—all the tremendous destinies on the knees of Mr. Gladstone—all the millionfold hopes and hungering longings that were involved—were as nought in comparison with the fact that the motion of Mr. Gladstone deprived him of the opportunity of raising a debate on Railway Rates. Coldly, calmly, self-confidently, Dr. Hunter attacked the Government in its weakest place, and drove the dagger home through the vulnerable side. The weakness of the position was this: there was a strong, vehement, and widespread revolt in the House against the exactions of the railway companies. Liberal members had on the subject exactly the same feelings as Tories; nightly a score of questions were asked on the subject. Altogether, indignation had broken down party lines, and against the railway companies Liberal and Tory made common cause. Unfortunately, Dr. Hunter's case had been strengthened by a somewhat weak yielding of Mr. Gladstone to a demand for a day on Bimetallism. This demand had, it is true, been urged upon him from various parts of the House, including his own, and he seemed to be yielding to a pretty universal demand. But Bimetallism was a craze with no chance of even distant success, while Railway Rates were at that very moment urgently calling for redress from hundreds of threatened industries. It would be seen then what a dexterous weapon for striking the Government the selection of the day for Railway Rates was.

The Tories ought to have at once perceived the value of the weapon which a Liberal had thus placed in their hands. Some of them did so, and, undoubtedly, if a man with the Parliamentary instinct of Lord Randolph Churchill had been at their head, they would at once have made deadly and, haply, destructive use of the opportunity. But Mr. Balfour was away. Lord Randolph sate, dark and solitary, at a remote seat, and Mr. Goschen can always be confidently relied upon to do the wrong thing. It will be seen presently how he helped to save the Government it was his duty to destroy. No; the danger of the situation came not from the Tory, but from the Liberal benches. There are in the Liberal, as in every party of the House, a number of young and new members who have not yet learned the secret and personal springs of action, and who, moreover, do not at once realize the vast underlying issues on an apparently small question. To them the Liberal intriguers against the Government had steadily and plausibly addressed themselves, and many of them were under the impression that the question raised by Dr. Hunter would decide nothing more serious than the special purpose to which one day of the Session could be devoted.

But anybody with the slightest acquaintance with the House of Commons would have soon perceived that matter of much greater pith and moment was at stake. The Senior Ministerial Whip is the danger-signal of the House of Commons; and the danger-signal was very much in evidence. Mr. Marjoribanks—of all Whips the most genial, even-tempered, and long-suffering, as well as the most effective—was to be seen, rushing backwards and forwards between the lobby and the Treasury bench, where, with Mr. Gladstone, he held whispered and apparently excited conversations. Meantime, there grew up in the House of Commons that mysterious sense of coming storm which its quick sensibilities always enable it to see from afar. There came a sudden murmuring, and then a strange stillness, and older members almost held their breaths. From the Irish benches not a sound escaped. In most Parliamentary frays—especially when the storm rages—there are certain Irish members who are certain to figure largely and eminently; but on these benches there was a silence, ominous to those who are able to note the signs of the Parliamentary firmament. Anyone looking on could have seen that the silence did not come from inattention or want of interest, for the looks betrayed keen and almost feverish excitement.

For what was going on was a fight whether Ireland was to be lost or saved, and lost through the folly, desertion, or levity of some of the men that had sworn to save her. Fortunately, the strains of the most tragic situations have their relief in the invincible irony of life, and there was a welcome break in the appearance on the scene of him whom all men know as "Alpheus Cleophas"—the redoubtable Mr. Morton. Some men are comic by intention, some are comic unconsciously and unintentionally, some men are comic half by intention and half in spite of themselves. To this last class belongs our Alpheus Cleophas. He played his part of comic relief with a certain air of knowing what was expected of him—you see this demoralizing House of Commons makes everybody self-conscious, and one could see that he himself anticipated the roar of laughter with which the House received his statement, "I have now a majority"—by which, for the moment, Alpheus appeared as the leader of the Government, and a party which controlled the destinies of the House of Commons.

Still, as I have said, this was only comic relief—the jokes, ofttimes mechanical, by which the young men and women downstairs prepare to pass the time which is required for the preparation of the great scene, in which their principals have to enact their great situation. Still, the dénouement of the drama was uncertain. Mr. Marjoribanks rushed from lobby to Mr. Gladstone, from Mr. Gladstone to lobby—and still there hung in the air the fatal question: "Was the Government going out?" Ah! think of it. Was Gladstone going to end his days in baffled purpose, in melancholy retirement, with the great last solemn issue of his life ended in puerile fiasco and farcical anarchy, instead of in the picture of two nations reconciled, an empire strengthened and ennobled, all humanity lifted to higher possibilities of brotherhood and concord, by the peaceful close of the bloody and hideous struggle of centuries? Think of it all, I say, and then go also in imagination to the door of the House of Commons, and see a Scotch Liberal fighting for dear life to bring into the Tory lobby the necessary number of misguided and ignorant neophytes to bring down this disastrous catastrophe.

Meantime, confusion still reigned on the Liberal benches. Men were confused, and bewildered, and irresolute, and frightened, conscience of calamitous danger, and yet unable to understand it all. And here let me say that this state of confusion was due partly to bad leadership. There is a want of cohesion—on this day in particular—on the Treasury bench. Mr. Gladstone, like all ardent natures, takes too much on himself. He is, of course, a tower of strength—twenty men are not such as he. But the burden cannot all be borne by one shoulder—especially at a portion of the sitting when, by a strict interpretation of the rules of the House, Mr. Gladstone is allowed to speak but once. Why were these scattered and young and inexperienced troops not told, by their leaders, of the vast issues involved in this coming vote? Why were not all the sophistries brushed away, by which the conspirators against the Government were hiding the real effect and purpose of the votes? Sir William Harcourt is an old Parliamentary hand; Mr. John Morley is excellent when a few words are required to meet a crisis; Mr. Asquith—keen, alert, alive to all that is going on—sits at Mr. Gladstone's side. Why were all these lips dumb? It made one almost rage or weep, to see the uncertain battle thus left unguided and uncontrolled.

At last a saviour, but he came from the ranks of the enemy. Mr. Goschen swept away the network of cobwebs under which Liberals had hidden the issues, and boldly declared the real issue. And that issue was, that Mr. Gladstone wanted time to push forward his Home Rule Bill, and that the Tory party was determined to prevent him getting that time if they could manage it. Where be now the hysterics about private members and simple issues and small questions? The issue lies naked and clear before the House. But still victory isn't assured. Mr. Goschen with his thick utterance, his muffled voice, his loss of grip and point, has ceased to be listened to very attentively in the House of Commons; and this speech—the most significant yet delivered—passes almost unnoticed, except by those who know the House of Commons and watch its moods and every word. The last and decisive word has yet to come.

At the same moment as Mr. Morton, Mr. Storey had risen from his seat, and demanded the word. There is a flutter of expectation. On this speech depended, at this moment, the fate of Home Rule and the Gladstone Government. What will it say? Mr. Storey always takes a line of his own; is a strong man with strong opinions, plenty of courage, not altogether free from the tendency of original natures, to break away from the mechanical uniformity of party discipline. Moreover, he is the chief among that sturdy little knot of Radicals below the gangway who are determined to make the Liberal coach go faster than the jog-trot of mere officialism. Will he call upon his friends to stand by the Government or to desert them—it is a most pregnant question.

It is not easy, in the midst of cyclones, to collect one's thoughts—to choose one's words—to hit straight home with short, emphatic blow. But this feat Mr. Storey accomplished. I have never heard, in my thirteen years' experience of the House of Commons, a speech more admirable in form. Not a word too much, and every sentence linked tight to the other—reasoning, cogent, unanswerable, resistless. And the point above all other things laid bare—are you Liberals going to help the Tories to postpone, if not finally overthrow Home Rule, or are you not? This, it will be seen, is but the emphasizing of the lead already given by the maladroit speech of Mr. Goschen. But Mr. Storey, clear, resonant, resolute, speaks to a House that listens with the stillness of great situations. Every word tells. The issue is understood and knit; and now let us troop into the lobbies, and proclaim to the world either our abject unfitness to govern an empire and pass a real statute, or let us stand by our great mission and mighty leader.

Not even yet do levity and faction surrender the final hope of doing mischief. At the door of the House, as I have already said, stands a Scotch Liberal doing the work of Tory Whips, and attempting to capture young members who have smoked their pipes or drank their tea, or wandered up and down the terrace by the peaceful Thames—all unconscious of the great and grim drama going forward upstairs. He catches hold of John Burns, among others—a sturdy son of the soil ready to receive, as might be hoped, anything which calls itself sturdy and independent Radicalism. Over honest John's manly form there is a fight; but he has a strong, clear, practical head over his muscular body, and at once penetrates to the underlying issue, and walks into Gladstone's lobby.

At last the division is nearing its close, and the excitement—perhaps, because it is so painfully repressed—has grown until it has almost become unbearable. Whenever there is a close division like this, several things happen which never happen on other occasions. Members gather round the doors of the division lobbies, listening to the tellers as they count one, two, three, four, and so on, in the mechanical voice of the croupiers, bidding the gamblers to play with the dice of death. The Whips also are narrowly watched to see which return first to the House, for the first return means which lobby has been sooner exhausted, and the lobby sooner exhausted is necessarily the smaller lobby, and, therefore, the lobby of the minority. Mr. Marjoribanks, who has told for the Government at the door of the Tory lobby, has returned to the House first. That's a good sign. But still, if there be a majority, what is it going to be?—disastrously near defeat, or near enough to moral strength as to mean nothing? A few minutes more have to pass before this fateful question is settled. Mr. Thomas Ellis—light, brisk—walks up the floor to the clerk in front of the table. Then the numbers are whispered to Mr. Gladstone. The winning teller always takes the paper from the clerk. It is Mr. Marjoribanks who receives the paper, and the Government has won. A faint cheer, then an immediate hush; we want to know the exact numbers. Mr. Marjoribanks reads them out—a majority of thirty-one. We have won, and we who support the Ministry, cheer; but our majority has been reduced, so the Opposition burst their throats with defiant answer.

Then, with fatuous folly, the Tories insist on another division. Two Irish members, driving straight from Euston station to the House—John Dillon and Mr. Collery—have meantime been added to the Ministerial ranks. Some of the mutineers have come back, and the majority rises to forty-two.

And so ended the great intrigue of the Liberal malcontents against the Gladstone Government.

The word had gone forth—the Home Rule Bill was not to be allowed to pass the second reading before the Easter recess. The slings and arrows of the Tory press had at last begun to have their effect, and obstruction had now been entered upon thoroughly, fiercely, and shamelessly. The first specimen of it was on the following Thursday night, when Mr. T.W. Russell took advantage of an harangue by Mr. Justice O'Brien—those Irish judges are all shameless political partisans—to move the adjournment of the House. Mr. Morley was in excellent fighting form. T.W. Russell is a man peculiarly well calculated to draw out the belligerent spirit of any man, and the Chief Secretary, though he holds himself well under restraint, has plenty of fire and passion in his veins. He let out at T.W. Russell in splendid style, and the more the Tories yelled, the more determinedly did Mr. Morley strike his blows. Russell, he said, had spread broadcast phylacteries, and used his most pharisaical language. At this there were deafening shouts from the Tory benches of "Withdraw! Withdraw!" Mr. Morley's reply was to repeat the words "pharisaical language"—at which there was another storm. Then Mr. Morley quietly observed that if he were out of order, the Speaker was the proper person to call him to account; and as the Speaker made no sign, the Tories were reduced to silence. In a few sentences, Mr. Morley made mince-meat of the whole attack: showing that crime, instead of increasing, had actually diminished in Clare since he had come into office, and that Mr. Balfour and coercion had completely failed to do even as much as he had done. Mr. Balfour made a somewhat feeble reply. And finally, in spite of a strong whip, the Tories were beaten by forty-five—the normal Liberal majority.

But all this was but the preface to uglier and worse work which was to come later on. Supply is the happy hunting-ground of obstructives. The questions there are small, and so easily comprehended, that even the dullest man can talk about them, and it requires—as I have said above—not intellect, but temperament. For nearly four hours there was a discussion on an item of £100, which had been spent on improving the accommodation of the House of Commons. John Burns, disgusted at this palpable waste of time, four times moved the closure. Jimmy Lowther—who has come wonderfully to the front since obstruction and general rowdyism has become the order of the day with the Tories—instantly turned to John with the observation that this was not the County Council; whereupon John promptly retorted, "Nor are you on Newmarket Heath." At last, after the waste of these four mortal hours, the closure was moved, was resisted by the majority of the Tory party, but, at the same time, was so necessary and proper, that several Tories voted in its favour, and some disgusted Unionists actually left the House.

But even worse was still behind. Mr. Bowles—a new and clever Tory member—was anxious to raise the whole question of Egyptian policy on a small vote for meeting the expense of building a new consular house at Cairo. Thereupon, Mr. Mellor—as he was plainly bound to do—declared that a discussion of the entire Egyptian policy would not be in order on such a vote. Pale, excited, looking his most evil self, Mr. Chamberlain got up to base an attack on Mr. Mellor for this judgment. There was a delighted howl from the young Tory bloods who had been obstructing so shamelessly throughout the evening. Mr. Chamberlain's example was followed by Mr. Balfour, by Sir John Gorst—in short, the whole Tory and Unionist pack were in full cry after the Chairman. The inner meaning of all this, was the desire to discredit the new Chairman, and intimidate him, lest he should show a bold front against the shameless obstruction on which the Tories had resolved. Mr. Sexton put this point neatly. In view, he said, of the combined attempt and evident combination to intimidate and embarrass the Chair—but he could go no further: for at once there was a fierce hurricane of howls, "Withdraw! Withdraw!" and "Shame! Shame!" from the Tories and renegades, which drowned every voice. Tory after Tory got up; shouts deafening, passionate, ferocious, made everything inaudible; Mr. Chamberlain, paler even than usual, shouted with full mouth across the floor; altogether, the scene was one of almost insane excitement. Mr. Mellor—gentle, considerate, conciliatory—reasoned, explained, expostulated. What he should have done, was to have named half-a-dozen Tories, and showed the party of bullies that their day was past.

CHAPTER V.

Obstruction is a thing rather of temperament than intellect. The occurrences of the early weeks of the Session of 1893 fully confirm this view. The Tory party and the Unionists vowed in their organs, and proved by their conduct in the House, that they determined to try and prevent, by obstruction, the second reading of the Home Rule Bill being taken before Easter. With this design they came down to the House every evening with a plan of attack. The consequences were somewhat serious to some members of the House. I saw young gentlemen suddenly developing activity whom I had beheld in the House for many years in succession without ever suspecting in them either the power or the desire to take any part in Parliamentary debate. The same gentlemen now rushed about with a hurried, preoccupied, and, above all, a self-conscious air that had its disgusting but also its very amusing side. For instance, Mr. Bromley-Davenport, during the six years of Tory Government, never spoke, and rarely even made his appearance in the House of Commons. His voice was as strange to the assembly as though he had never belonged to it. But this Session he is constantly getting up in his seat, and he rushes through the lobbies with the cyclonic movement of a youth bearing on juvenile shoulders a weight too heavy to bear. Mr. Bartley is about as dull a fellow as ever bored a House of Commons, and in the last Parliament even his own friends found him a trial and a nuisance. He has suddenly taken to making the House of Commons familiar with his voice at every sitting. Lord Cranborne has been remarkable for the boorishness and impertinence of his manners—or, perhaps, to be more accurate, want of manners. I have seen him interrupting Mr. Gladstone in the most impudent way with a face you would like to slap, and his hands deep down in the depths of his pockets. Lord Cranborne is now nightly in evidence, and leads the chorus of jeers and cheers by which the more brutal of the Tory youth signalize the opening of the new style of Parliamentary warfare.

But of all the things which indicate the new state of affairs which has arisen, nothing is so significant as the change in the position of Jimmy Lowther. People think that I have attached too much importance to this extraordinary individual, and that he should be taken simply as the frank horse-jockey he looks and seems. I have given my reasons for believing that in a crisis Jimmy would develop a very different side of his character, and that he has in him—latent and disguised for the moment—all the terrible passions and possibilities of the aristocrat at bay. However, let that question rest with history and its future developments; his position at the present moment is very peculiar. There is a report that the desire of his heart is to sit on the first seat on the front bench below the gangway, which for seven years was occupied by Mr. Labouchere, and which for the five years of Mr. Gladstone's Ministry of 1880 to 1885 was occupied by Lord Randolph Churchill when he was the chief of the dead and buried Fourth Party. That seat is the natural point for a sharpshooter and guerilla warrior. Indeed, the first seat below the gangway seems just as marked out by fate for such a man as Jimmy Lowther, as one of the high fortresses on the Rhine for the work of the bold freebooter of the Middle Ages. But for some reason or other, Jimmy did not attain his heart's desire, and he is compelled to sit on the front Opposition bench. This would not seem an affliction to ordinary men. Indeed, the desire to sit on one of the front benches may be regarded as the root of all evil in Parliamentary nature—the desire to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge which is as fatal to nature born without original political sin as that disastrous episode in the annals of our first parents.

One of the most curious episodes in the career of Disraeli was that he insisted on sitting on the front Opposition bench before he had ever held office—an act of unprecedented and unjustifiable daring which throws a significant light on that habit of self-assertion to which he owed a good deal of his success in life. For what a seat on the front Opposition bench means is, that the holder thereof has once held office in an administration, and so is justified for the remainder of his days in regarding himself as above the common herd. But Jimmy isn't as ordinary men. A place on the front Opposition bench, with all its advantages, has the countervailing disadvantages of binding to a certain decency and decorum of behaviour, and nothing could be more galling to the free and full soul of the distinguished steward of the Jockey Club. It is said that in the same way his colleagues on the front Opposition bench would prefer Jimmy's room to his company. In Parliamentary politics, as in diplomacy, there is such a thing as having an agent whom you can profit by, and at the same time disavow—just as it may suit you. That is one of the many guileful methods of these crafty men who sit on front benches on both sides of the House. Obstruction is a thing too horrible to be practised by any man who has ever held responsible position, and it is delightful to see how Mr. Balfour repudiates the very idea of anything of the kind. It would, therefore, have suited Mr. Balfour a good deal better if Jimmy could have obstructed from some quarter of the House where his closeness of association would not so largely commit his more responsible colleagues to participation in his iniquities. However, it was not to be managed; and the leaders of the Opposition are bound to put up with the closeness of Jimmy's companionship.

Again I repeat, obstruction is a matter not of intellect, but temperament. Intellectually, I should put Jimmy in a very low place, even in the ranks of the stupid party. Temperamentally he stands very high. A brief description of his methods of obstruction will bring this home. First, it should be said that he is entirely inarticulate and, beyond rough common sense, destitute of ideas. He has nothing to say, and he cannot say it. There are men in the House of Commons who have plenty of thoughts, and who have plenty of words besides, and could branch out on any subject whatever into a dissertation which would command the interest even of political foes. But Jimmy is not of this class. He is capable, on the contrary, of bringing down the loftiest subject that ever moved human breasts to something stumbling, commonplace and prosaic. When he gets up, then, his speech consists rather of a series of gulps than of articulate or intelligible statements. But then mark the singular courage and audacity of the whole proceeding. There are traditions still in the House of Commons of the marvellously stimulating effect upon followers of leaders, who were proverbial for their oratorical impotence. Everybody remembers the scornful description of Castlereagh which Byron gave to the world; and yet it has been said in some memoirs that the moment Castlereagh stood up and adjusted his waistcoat, there was a thrill in the House of Commons, and his followers bellowed their exultation and delight. In a more recent day, Lord Althorpe was able to bear down the hostility of some of the most powerful orators of his time by a bluff manliness which no rhetoric could withstand. And so also with Jimmy—his sheer audacity carries him along the slow, dull, inept, muddy tide of his inarticulate speech.

And curiously enough, it is impossible to put him down. On March 6th he was commenting on some item which he supposed was in a Post-office Estimate. It was pointed out to him that the item to which he alluded was not in that particular vote at all, but in quite another vote, which came later on. Jimmy, nevertheless, went on to discuss the item as if nothing had been said. Then the long-suffering Chairman had to be called in, and he ruled—as every human being would have been bound to rule—that Jimmy was out of order. Was Jimmy put down? Not the least in the world. He made an apology, and, as the apology was ample and his deliverance is slow, the apology enabled him to consume some more minutes of precious Government time. And then, having failed to find fault with the estimate for what it did not contain, he proceeded to assail it for what it did contain. Here again he was out of order, for the estimate was prepared exactly as every other estimate had been prepared for years. This answer was given to him. But Jimmy went on—gulping and obstructing, obstructing and gulping. It is amusing, perhaps, to you who can read this description as part of an after-dinner's amusement, but what is one to think of a Parliamentary institution that can be so flouted, and nullified by mere beef-headed dulness? This is a question to make any one pause who has faith in Parliamentary institutions.

During all these performances, Mr. Balfour keeps steadily away from the House. He never was a good attendant, even in his best of days, and now that he is relieved of responsibility, he naturally seeks to take advantage of it. But he doesn't take so much advantage as one would expect. He who used to be so indolent, has developed a feverish activity. He seems during some portions of every sitting to be ready to rise to his feet at the smallest provocation, and to interfere in the smallest matter of detail. It is this tendency which has hurried him into some of those ridiculous errors, which he has made so frequently. The explanation of it all, is that curious figure that sits so silent, remote, and friendless on the front Opposition bench. Lord Randolph is still the riddle which nobody can read. Whenever Mr. Balfour appears Lord Randolph does his best to efface himself, even in the places which men select on the front bench. Here is a hint of that eternal conflict and play of ferocious appetites and passions which is going on in the House of Commons. Everybody who has ever visited the House of Commons must have observed that pair of boxes which stand on the table in front of the Speaker's chair. These boxes mark to the outward world the positions of the most important men in the House of Commons—the Leader of the House and the Leader of the Opposition. Mr. Balfour, whenever he is in the House, sits opposite his box, and so proclaims to all the world the lofty post he holds. And when this is the case, it is in almost the very last seat—separated by half a dozen other individuals—Lord Randolph is to be seen. To turn to another part of the House, it is the men in whom Mr. Gladstone most confides who sit on either side of him—Sir William Harcourt and Mr. John Morley. If on any day it were seen that either of these two men had left the side of their leader, and was separated from him by several others, the rumour would run like wildfire through the House of Commons that the relations of the Premier and one of his chief lieutenants were strained.

So Mr. Balfour watches Lord Randolph and Lord Randolph watches Mr. Balfour, with the deadly vigilance of two men who stand opposite each other in a wood with drawn swords in their hands. There is another gentleman, besides, whom the Tory leader has to watch, and, perhaps, more keenly. Lord Randolph Churchill is not always in his place, and his movements in these days are leisurely—I remember when they were electric in their rapidity and frequency. But Mr. Chamberlain is a distinctly ready man. Whatever gifts he has, are always at his command. He is like the shopman who puts all his goods in the window. The goods are not very fine nor very good, but they are showy and cheap, and, above all things, take the eye. Mr. Chamberlain in his day has been a poor attendant in Parliament—a friend of his used to tell him, when he was supposed to have the reversion of the Liberal leadership, that his inability to remain for hours in succession in the House of Commons would always stand in the way of his being the leader of that assembly. But he turns up now usually after dinner, and from his seat on the third bench below the gangway, on the Liberal side, watches the progress of battle. It is known to the intimates of Mr. Balfour that he has not a particularly high opinion of his partner in the work of obstructing the cause of Home Rule. Indeed, it is impossible that the two men should be really sympathetic with each other. With all his faults, Mr. Balfour does represent the literary and cultured side of political life; while Mr. Chamberlain is illiteracy embodied. Then, Mr. Chamberlain has a knack of attributing every victory to himself—modesty isn't one of his many virtues—and this cannot be particularly agreeable to the real leader of the Opposition. There is thus a constant competition between the two men as to which shall give the marching orders to the enemies of the Government.

There was a singular scene on March 6th, which brought out the relations of the two in a singular manner. There appeared that day in the congenial columns of the Times a letter, a column in length, and set forth with all the resources of leaded and displayed type which the office could afford. In this letter Joe had lamented the disappearance of those courteous manners of an elder and more Chesterfieldian time, to which he suggested he belonged. The origin of this delicious lament over a venerable and more courteous past by so flagrant a type of modernity, was a statement that Sir William Harcourt had played the dirty trick of putting down a notice to suspend the twelve o'clock rule at a shorter notice than usual. The suspension of the twelve o'clock rule simply means that the Tories shall not be allowed to obstruct by the mere fact that the House is compelled automatically to close at midnight under the existing rules. Joe appeared in his place swelling with visibly virtuous indignation; evidently he had come, ready to bear down on Sir William and the Government generally with the cyclone of attack. But this notable design was prevented by two accidents. First, Sir William Harcourt got up and explained that the notice he had given was exactly the same kind of notice that was always, and had been always, given in like circumstances. Everybody who knows anything about Parliamentary matters knows that this was the literal truth. The dirty trick which Mr. Chamberlain had attributed to Sir William Harcourt existed only in his own uninstructed and treacherous memory; and so he was crushed. Still he wanted to have a word in, and more than once he showed signs of rising to his feet. But he stopped half-way, and, when he did finally get up, Mr. Balfour was before him, and he had to sit down again. Then his opportunity was lost, for Mr. Balfour had declared that he was perfectly satisfied with what Sir William Harcourt had done, and that prevented Joe from entering on the filibustering tactics which apparently he contemplated. This appeared to the whole House to be a very distinct and unpleasant snub for Joseph. A short time afterwards he and Mr. Balfour were seen in the lobby, engaged in a conversation that was apparently vehement, and everybody jumped to the conclusion that they were having it out, and that Joseph was resenting the rejection of his advice with that haughtiness of temper which is so well-known a characteristic of the Radical whom wealth has converted into a leader of the aristocracy. The papers afterwards contained an announcement that the two conspirators against Mr. Gladstone's Government were in the heartiest accord. This was one of the semi-official denials which are generally regarded as the best testimony to the truth of the report denied.

If one were on the look-out for dramatic and instructive contrast in the House of Commons, one could not do better than study Mr. Morley and Mr. Chamberlain for a week. Mr. Chamberlain—glib, shallow, self-possessed, well-trained by years of public life—debates admirably. Nobody can deny that—not even those who, like myself, find his speaking exasperatingly empty and superficial and foolish. He is master of all his resources; scarcely ever pauses for a word, and when he is interrupted, can parry the stroke with a return blow of lightning-like rapidity. But when he sits down, is there any human being that feels a bit the wiser or the better for what he has said? And who can get over the idea that it has all been a bit of clever special pleading—such as one could hear in half-a-dozen courts of law any day of the week? And, finally, who is there that can help feeling throughout all the speech that this is a selfish nature—full of venom, ambition, and passion—seeing in political conflict not great principles to advance—holy causes to defend—happiness to extend—but so many enemies' faces to grind to dust?

Mr. Morley is a fine platform speaker, but as yet he is not nearly as good a debater as Mr. Chamberlain. He stumbles, hesitates, finds it hard often to get the exact word he wants. And yet who cannot listen to him for ten minutes without a sense of a great mind—and what to me is better, a fine character behind it all? This man has thought out—possibly in travail of spirit—and his creed—though it may not be the exultant cheerfulness of natures richer in muscle than in thought—is one for which he will fight and sacrifice, and not yield. In short, the thinness of Mr. Chamberlain—the depths of Mr. Morley—these are the things which one will learn from hearing them speak even once.

I have said that Mr. Morley is not as good a debater as Mr. Chamberlain; but if Mr. Chamberlain be wise, he will call his watch-dogs off Mr. Morley, for he is being badgered into an excellent debater. Every night he improves in his answers to questions. Tersely, frigidly—though there is the undercurrent of scorn and sacred passion in most of what he says—Mr. Morley meets the taunts and charges of the Russells, and the Macartneys, and the Carsons, and never yet has he been beaten in one of those hand-to-hand fights.

There was a curious but instructive little scene towards the end of a sitting early in March. The Tories—headed by Jimmy Lowther—had been obstructing in the most shameless way for a whole afternoon. Towards the end of the evening Mr. Chamberlain had come down and joined in the fray—lending his authority to tactics which usually had been left to the rag-tag and bobtail of all parties. As I have already said, this kind of intervention had seriously diminished Mr. Chamberlain in the respect of the House. And the way in which he did his work was venomous as well as petty. The vote under discussion was a Supplemental Estimate for Light Railways in Ireland. Everybody knows that light railways were the policy of the late and not of the present Government. A supplemental estimate means simply a smaller sum by which the original estimate has been exceeded. It ought to have been a matter of course that this supplementary estimate should have been agreed to by the Tories, seeing that it was money necessary to carry out the programme passed by their own friends in the previous administration. But the Tories were in no humour to listen to such trifles as these, and carried on lengthy discussions. Mr. Morley, having no responsibility for the policy which rendered such a vote necessary, was away in his room, attending to the duties of his laborious department. Mr. T.W. Russell assumed to be in a great pucker over this absence, and actually tried to stop the proceedings until Mr. Morley came back.