leader, he seemed
to be inspired by the occasion to a performance beyond his usual range,
and he delivered the final charge with strong effect. The bill, he said,
was the concoction of the prime minister and the Irish secretary, and the
cabinet had no voice in the matter. The government had delayed the
progress of the bill for a whole long and weary month, in order to give
party wirepullers plenty of time in which to frighten waverers. To treat a
vote on the second reading as a mere vote on a principle, without
reference to the possibility of applying it, was a mischievous farce.
Could anybody dream that if he supported the second reading now, he would
not compromise his action in the autumn and would not be appealed to as
having made a virtual promise to Ireland, of which it would be impossible
to disappoint her? As for the bill itself, whatever lawyers might say of
the theoretic maintenance of supremacy, in practice it would have gone.
All this side of the case was put by the speaker with the straight and
vigorous thrust that always works with strong effect in this great arena
of contest.

Then came the unflagging veteran with the last of his five speeches. He
was almost as white as the flower in his coat, but the splendid compass,
the flexibility, the moving charm and power of his voice, were never more
wonderful. The construction of the speech was a masterpiece, the temper of
it unbroken, its freedom from taunt and bitterness and small personality
incomparable. Even if Mr. Gladstone had been in the prime of his days,
instead of a man of seventy-six years all struck; even if he had been at
his ease for the last four months, instead of labouring with indomitable
toil at the two bills, bearing all the multifarious burdens of the head of
a government, and all the weight of the business of the leader of the
House, undergoing all the hourly strain and contention of a political
situation of unprecedented difficulty,--much of the contention being of
that peculiarly trying and painful sort which means the parting of
colleagues and friends,--his closing speech would still have been a
surprising effort of free, argumentative, and fervid appeal. With the
fervid (M124) appeal was mingled more than one piece of piquant mockery.
Mr. Chamberlain had said that a dissolution had no terrors for him. "I do
not wonder at it. I do not see how a dissolution can have any terrors for
him. He has trimmed his vessel, and he has touched his ru