could be bought or bullied, or cajoled into the betrayal
of Ireland's Parliament.

Look at him as he stands at the box. You can see that he has been bred
into almost impudent self-confidence, by those coercion tribunals, in
which the best men of Ireland lay at the mercy of a creature like Mr.
Balfour and the meaner creatures who were ready to do Mr. Balfour's
work. Mr. Carson, not a year in the House, places his hands on the box,
then on his hips, with all the airs of a man who had been in Parliament
for a lifetime--attacks Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Morley, Mr. Justice
Mathew--three of the highest-minded and ablest men of their time--as
though he were at Petty Sessions, with Mr. Cecil Roche dispensing
justice. It is an odious sight. It makes even Englishmen shudder. But it
has its uses. It throws on to the floor of the House of Commons with all
the illumination of those great times, the abysses and passions and
sinister figures in Ireland's moving tragedy.

CHAPTER VII.

A FORTNIGHT OF QUIET WORK.

[Sidenote: Dulness.]

The House did very good work during the last fortnight in March. This
has a corollary more satisfactory to the public than to the journalist;
for, whenever business is progressing, it invariably means that the
proceedings have been extremely dull. It is a well-known phenomenon of
the House of Commons, that the moment there is a chance of anything like
a personal scene--though the encounter be of the smallest possible
moment and affect nothing beyond two personalities of no particular
importance--it is well known that whenever such scene is promised, the
benches of the House of Commons prove too small for the huge crowds that
rush to them from all parts. Mr. Fowler introduced one of the most
revolutionary measures ever brought into the House of
Commons--revolutionary I mean, of course, in the good sense--and yet he
delivered his new gospel of emancipation to a House that at no period
was in the least crowded, and that was never excited. Happy is the
country that has no annals, fruitful is the Parliament that has no
scenes.

[Sidenote: Uganda again.]

But there were signs of something like storm at certain portions of the
sitting on March 20th, for there stood on the paper the Estimate which
raised the difficult question of Uganda, and on that question, as
everybody knows, there is a yawning gulf between the opinions of Mr.
Labouchere and a number of Radicals below the gangway, and the
occupants