Sketches in the House. T. P. O'Connor

lines, and against the railway companies Liberal and Tory made common cause. Unfortunately, Dr. Hunter's case had been strengthened by a somewhat weak yielding of Mr. Gladstone to a demand for a day on Bimetallism. This demand had, it is true, been urged upon him from various parts of the House, including his own, and he seemed to be yielding to a pretty universal demand. But Bimetallism was a craze with no chance of even distant success, while Railway Rates were at that very moment urgently calling for redress from hundreds of threatened industries. It would be seen then what a dexterous weapon for striking the Government the selection of the day for Railway Rates was.

      No Tory Leader.

      The Tories ought to have at once perceived the value of the weapon which a Liberal had thus placed in their hands. Some of them did so, and, undoubtedly, if a man with the Parliamentary instinct of Lord Randolph Churchill had been at their head, they would at once have made deadly and, haply, destructive use of the opportunity. But Mr. Balfour was away. Lord Randolph sate, dark and solitary, at a remote seat, and Mr. Goschen can always be confidently relied upon to do the wrong thing. It will be seen presently how he helped to save the Government it was his duty to destroy. No; the danger of the situation came not from the Tory, but from the Liberal benches. There are in the Liberal, as in every party of the House, a number of young and new members who have not yet learned the secret and personal springs of action, and who, moreover, do not at once realize the vast underlying issues on an apparently small question. To them the Liberal intriguers against the Government had steadily and plausibly addressed themselves, and many of them were under the impression that the question raised by Dr. Hunter would decide nothing more serious than the special purpose to which one day of the Session could be devoted.

      A coming storm.

      But anybody with the slightest acquaintance with the House of Commons would have soon perceived that matter of much greater pith and moment was at stake. The Senior Ministerial Whip is the danger-signal of the House of Commons; and the danger-signal was very much in evidence. Mr. Marjoribanks—of all Whips the most genial, even-tempered, and long-suffering, as well as the most effective—was to be seen, rushing backwards and forwards between the lobby and the Treasury bench, where, with Mr. Gladstone, he held whispered and apparently excited conversations. Meantime, there grew up in the House of Commons that mysterious sense of coming storm which its quick sensibilities always enable it to see from afar. There came a sudden murmuring, and then a strange stillness, and older members almost held their breaths. From the Irish benches not a sound escaped. In most Parliamentary frays—especially when the storm rages—there are certain Irish members who are certain to figure largely and eminently; but on these benches there was a silence, ominous to those who are able to note the signs of the Parliamentary firmament. Anyone looking on could have seen that the silence did not come from inattention or want of interest, for the looks betrayed keen and almost feverish excitement.

      Ireland in danger.

      For what was going on was a fight whether Ireland was to be lost or saved, and lost through the folly, desertion, or levity of some of the men that had sworn to save her. Fortunately, the strains of the most tragic situations have their relief in the invincible irony of life, and there was a welcome break in the appearance on the scene of him whom all men know as "Alpheus Cleophas"—the redoubtable Mr. Morton. Some men are comic by intention, some are comic unconsciously and unintentionally, some men are comic half by intention and half in spite of themselves. To this last class belongs our Alpheus Cleophas. He played his part of comic relief with a certain air of knowing what was expected of him—you see this demoralizing House of Commons makes everybody self-conscious, and one could see that he himself anticipated the roar of laughter with which the House received his statement, "I have now a majority"—by which, for the moment, Alpheus appeared as the leader of the Government, and a party which controlled the destinies of the House of Commons.

      

      Mere comic relief.

      Still, as I have said, this was only comic relief—the jokes, ofttimes mechanical, by which the young men and women downstairs prepare to pass the time which is required for the preparation of the great scene, in which their principals have to enact their great situation. Still, the dénouement of the drama was uncertain. Mr. Marjoribanks rushed from lobby to Mr. Gladstone, from Mr. Gladstone to lobby—and still there hung in the air the fatal question: "Was the Government going out?" Ah! think of it. Was Gladstone going to end his days in baffled purpose, in melancholy retirement, with the great last solemn issue of his life ended in puerile fiasco and farcical anarchy, instead of in the picture of two nations reconciled, an empire strengthened and ennobled, all humanity lifted to higher possibilities of brotherhood and concord, by the peaceful close of the bloody and hideous struggle of centuries? Think of it all, I say, and then go also in imagination to the door of the House of Commons, and see a Scotch Liberal fighting for dear life to bring into the Tory lobby the necessary number of misguided and ignorant neophytes to bring down this disastrous catastrophe.

      Why no signal?

      Meantime, confusion still reigned on the Liberal benches. Men were confused, and bewildered, and irresolute, and frightened, conscience of calamitous danger, and yet unable to understand it all. And here let me say that this state of confusion was due partly to bad leadership. There is a want of cohesion—on this day in particular—on the Treasury bench. Mr. Gladstone, like all ardent natures, takes too much on himself. He is, of course, a tower of strength—twenty men are not such as he. But the burden cannot all be borne by one shoulder—especially at a portion of the sitting when, by a strict interpretation of the rules of the House, Mr. Gladstone is allowed to speak but once. Why were these scattered and young and inexperienced troops not told, by their leaders, of the vast issues involved in this coming vote? Why were not all the sophistries brushed away, by which the conspirators against the Government were hiding the real effect and purpose of the votes? Sir William Harcourt is an old Parliamentary hand; Mr. John Morley is excellent when a few words are required to meet a crisis; Mr. Asquith—keen, alert, alive to all that is going on—sits at Mr. Gladstone's side. Why were all these lips dumb? It made one almost rage or weep, to see the uncertain battle thus left unguided and uncontrolled.

      Mr. Goschen to the rescue.

      At last a saviour, but he came from the ranks of the enemy. Mr. Goschen swept away the network of cobwebs under which Liberals had hidden the issues, and boldly declared the real issue. And that issue was, that Mr. Gladstone wanted time to push forward his Home Rule Bill, and that the Tory party was determined to prevent him getting that time if they could manage it. Where be now the hysterics about private members and simple issues and small questions? The issue lies naked and clear before the House. But still victory isn't assured. Mr. Goschen with his thick utterance, his muffled voice, his loss of grip and point, has ceased to be listened to very attentively in the House of Commons; and this speech—the most significant yet delivered—passes almost unnoticed, except by those who know the House of Commons and watch its moods and every word. The last and decisive word has yet to come.

      Mr. Storey's contribution.

      At the same moment as Mr. Morton, Mr. Storey had risen from his seat, and demanded the word. There is a flutter of expectation. On this speech depended, at this moment, the fate of Home Rule and the Gladstone Government. What will it say? Mr. Storey always takes a line of his own; is a strong man with strong opinions, plenty of courage, not altogether free from the tendency of original natures, to break away from the mechanical uniformity of party discipline. Moreover, he is the chief among that sturdy little knot of Radicals below the gangway who are determined to make the Liberal coach go faster than the jog-trot of mere officialism. Will he call upon his friends to stand by the Government or to desert them—it is a most pregnant question.

      It is not easy, in the midst of cyclones, to collect one's thoughts—to choose one's words—to hit straight home with short, emphatic blow. But this feat Mr. Storey accomplished. I have never heard, in my thirteen years' experience of the House of Commons, a speech more admirable in form. Not a word too much, and every sentence linked tight to the other—reasoning, cogent, unanswerable, resistless. And the point above all other things laid bare—are you Liberals going to help the Tories to postpone, if not finally overthrow Home Rule, or are you not? This, it will