acier with slipping steps,
the abyss beneath, the avalanche above--watchful enemies all round--even
among the guides he ought to be able to trust. Do you suppose that every
member of the Liberal party loves Mr. Asquith, and is delighted when he
displays his great talents? Do you think that none of the gentlemen
below the gangway do not believe that in their mute and inglorious
breasts, there are no streams of eloquence more copious and resistless?
No, my friend, take this as an axiom of political careers, that you hold
your life as long as you are able to kill anybody who tries to kill you,
and not one hour longer.

[Sidenote: Powerful malcontents.]

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.

[Sidenote: The out-manoeuvred Tories.]

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