at was the
great project to which they would have to say that Aye or No on
which for them and for the State so much would hang.

"Of the chief comrades or rivals of the minister's own generation,
the strong administrators, the eager and accomplished debaters,
the sagacious leaders, the only survivor now comparable to him, in
eloquence or in influence, was Mr. Bright. That illustrious man
seldom came into the House in those distracted days; and on this
memorable occasion his stern and noble head was to be seen in dim
obscurity.

"Various as were the emotions in other regions of the House, in
one quarter rejoicing was unmixed. There, at least, was no doubt
and no misgiving. There, pallid and tranquil, sat the Irish
leader, whose hard insight, whose patience, energy, and spirit of
command, had achieved this astounding result, and done that which
he had vowed to his countrymen that he would assuredly be able to
do. On the benches round him genial excitement rose almost to
tumult. Well it might. For the first time since the Union the
Irish case was at last to be pressed in all its force and
strength, in every aspect of policy and of conscience by the most
powerful Englishman then alive.

"More striking than the audience was the man; more striking than
the multitude of eager onlookers from the shore was the rescuer,
with deliberate valour facing the floods ready to wash him down;
the veteran Ulysses, who, after more than half a century of
combat, service, toil, thought it not too late to try a further
'work of noble note,' In the hands of such a master of the
instrument the theme might easily have lent itself to one of those
displays of exalted passion which the House had marvelled at in
more than one of Mr. Gladstone's speeches on the Turkish question,
or heard with religious reverence in his speech on the Affirmation
Bill in 1883.

"What the occasion now required was that passion should burn low,
and reasoned persuasion hold up the guiding lamp. An elaborate
scheme was to be unfolded, an unfamiliar policy to be explained
and vindicated. Of that best kind of eloquence which dispenses
with declamation this was a fine and sustained example. There was
a deep, rapid, steady, onflowing volume of arguments, exposition,
exhortation. Every hard or bitter stroke was avoided. Now