n who rose to call
attention to it would have been coughed or even hooted down; and he
would be certain to receive very rough treatment from the Tory party.
The Tory party still remains the party of the monopolists and the
selfish, but it has learned that household suffrage means a considerable
weapon in the hands of working men, and, accordingly, though it may put
its tongue in its cheek, it keeps that tongue very civil whenever it
begins to utter opinion. To Mr. Wilson, then, the Tories, as well as the
Liberals, listened with respectful and rapt attention as he made his
complaint of employment of the military and naval forces of the Crown
in--as he alleged--the buttressing of the case of the employers. And yet
there was a something lacking. Mr. Asquith was able to show that he had
done no more than he was compelled to do by the obligations of his
office; and entirely repudiated any idea of allowing the forces of the
Empire to be ranged on the one side or the other. Mr. Mundella was able
to make a good defence of his officials against the charge which had
been brought by Mr. Wilson. There was a good speech from John Burns, and
it looked as if not another sympathetic word was going to be said for
those starving men and women, who are making so heroic a fight for the
right to live. Altogether, the situation was awkward and even
distressing. The House, divided between the desire to remain neutral and
to be sympathetic, was puzzled, constrained, and silent. It was at this
moment that Mr. Lockwood made a most welcome and appropriate
intervention. Gathering together the scattered and somewhat tangled
threads of the debate, he put to Mr. Mundella several pertinent
questions--among others, the very relevant one, whether or not the
Shipping Federation had the right to employ sailors, whether they are
not violating the law against "crimping" in so doing. Incidentally, Mr.
Lockwood remarked, amid cheers from the Radical Benches--delighted at
this opportunity of departing from its painful and embarrassed
silence--that Liberal members had been returned to support the cause of
labour, and that they ought to be true to their pledges. Mr. Gladstone
at once grasped the situation with that unerring instinct which he has
displayed so splendidly in the present Session, and at once undertook
that the point raised by Mr. Lockwood should be considered; and so, with
a word of sympathy and hope to the strikers, Mr. Gladstone rescued the
House a