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

struggle has always about it a solemnity too sad for tears, too deep for joy. The Liberals and the Irishry stood up; but, even at that hour, there were evidences of the fissures and chasms which the two great political disruptions-the disruption in the English Liberal and in the Irish party—have produced. On the third bench below the Gangway sate the Liberal Unionists, Mr. Gladstone's deadliest foes, with pallid-faced, perky-nosed, malignant Chamberlain at their head, the face distorted by the baffled hate, the accumulated venom of all these years of failure, apostasy, and outlawry. Not one of the renegade Liberals stood up, and there they sate, a solid mass of hatred and rancour. On the Irish side, Mr. Redmond and the few Parnellites kept up the tradition of their dead leader in his last years of distrust and dislike of Mr. Gladstone by also remaining seated.

      The speech.

      The first notes of the Old Man suggested he was in excellent form. It is always easy for those who are well acquainted with him to know when the Old Man is going to make a great, and when he will deliver only a moderately good speech. If he is going to do splendidly the tone at the start is very calm, the delivery is measured, the sentences are long, and break on the ear with something of the long-drawn-out slowness of the Alexandrine. So it was on this occasion. Sentence followed sentence in measured and perfect cadence; with absolute self-possession; and in a voice not unduly pitched. And yet there were those traces of fatigue to which I have alluded, and I have since heard that one of the few occasions in his life when Mr. Gladstone had a sleepless night was on the night before he introduced his second great Home Rule Bill. And it should be added that, stirring and eloquent as were the opening sentences, they were not listened to by the House with that extraordinary enthusiasm which, on other occasions, sentences of this splendid eloquence would have elicited. For what really the House wanted to learn was the great enigma which had been kept for seven long years—in spite of protests, hypocritical appeals, and, ofttimes, tedious remonstrance from over-zealous and over-fussy friends.

      

      The Bill.

      By the time Mr. Gladstone had got to the Bill, he had exhausted a good deal of his stock of voice, and yet he seemed to be less dependent than usual on the mysterious compound which Mrs. Gladstone mixes with her own wifely hand for those solemn occasions. It appeared that both she and her husband had somewhat dreaded the ordeal. The bottle which Mr. Gladstone usually brings with him is about the size of those small, stunted little jars in which, in the days of our youth, the young buck kept his bear's grease, or other ornament of the toilet. But on Monday Mr. Gladstone was armed with a large blue bottle—somewhat like one of those 8 oz. medicine bottles which stand so often beside our beds in this age of sleeplessness and worry. Nevertheless, Mr. Gladstone and his wife had miscalculated, for on two occasions only throughout the entire speech did he have to make application for sustenance to the medicine bottle. Another precaution which had been taken turned out also to be unnecessary. The Premier's eyesight is not as good as it was a few years ago; and he sometimes finds it difficult to read anything but the biggest print. For this reason, elaborate preparations had been made for helping his eyesight. On the table before the Speaker's chair there was a small lamp—somewhat like a student's lamp. This also turned out to be unnecessary, for the Old Man was able to read his notes without the smallest difficulty; and the speech had come to a conclusion long before the hour when the deepening shadows make it hard to read by the light from the glass roof of the House.

      The peroration.

      At last, the latest details had been given; the Old Man approached his peroration. By this time the voice had sunk in parts to a low whisper, and the deathly hue of the beautiful face had grown deeper. There was something that almost inspired awe as one looked at that strange, curious, solitary figure in the growing darkness. The intense strain on the House had finally exhausted it, and there had come a silence that had in it the solemnity, the strange stillness, the rapt emotion of some sublime service in a great cathedral rather than the beginning of one of the fiercest and most rancorous party conflicts of our time. To this mood Mr. Gladstone attuned the closing words of his speech. The words came slowly, quietly, gently, sinking at times almost to a whisper. What fantasies could not one's mind play as one listened to these words. There was underneath the language, the looks, the voice, the tragic thought that this was a message rather from the shadow-land beyond the grave than from this rough, noisy, material world. Imagine yourself in a country church, the sole visitor in the ghostly silence and the solemn twilight, with spectres all around you in the memorials of the dead and memories of the living, and then fancy the organist silently stealing, also alone, to the organ, and giving out to the evening air some beautifully solemn anthem with all the sadness of death, and none of the exultant joy of resurrection, and then you will get some faint idea of the pent-up emotion which filled every sympathetic heart in the great assembly as the Old Man finally came to the closing words of his great speech. It was not so much a peroration as an appeal, a message, a benediction.

      At first, when the Old Man sat down, the pause followed that speaks of emotion too deep for prompt expression, and then once again a rush to their feet by the Irishry and the Liberals, loud cheering, and the waving of hats, and all those other manifestations of vehement feeling which alone Mr. Gladstone is privileged to receive. The Tories had kept very quiet; had conducted themselves on the whole very well. Once or twice came a high sniff of disgust, and now and then a younger member could not restrain himself from an exclamation. But, altogether, the Opposition was under the same spell as the rest of the House, and listened patiently to the end.

      Mr. Sexton.

      I may pass over all that occurred on that Monday evening, with the single exception of the very remarkable speech of Mr. Sexton. It was well known that Mr. Sexton had taken a prominent part in laying before Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues the views of the Irish party as to what would constitute a satisfactory Bill to the Irish people; and Mr. Sexton was authorised by his colleagues to state their views to the House. This he did slowly, deliberately, without the least attempt at oratory, but in language extraordinarily lucid, delicately shaded, touching on points with exquisite art. And what he said came to this; that the Bill was a good Bill; that in his opinion it could be accepted by the Irish people as a satisfactory settlement of their demands; but that in two points it needed careful watching, and perhaps considerable amendment: the financial settlement and the future of the Land Question.

      Mr. Balfour.

      The Leader of the Opposition had not, so far, shone in his new position, and people were not slow in coming to the conclusion that he required the stimulus and the strength of a solid majority behind him to bring out his peculiar talents. At all events, his first speech following the introduction of the Home Rule Bill was a ghastly failure. It was listened to in almost unbroken silence from the beginning to the end—not that the speech had not plenty of cleverness in it, the small cleverness of small points—but it was badly delivered. It did not seem to rise to the heights expected on such an occasion; in short, it was a disappointment. Only once or twice did the Leader of the Opposition succeed in rousing his friends to even an approach to enthusiasm. Speaking of the amount of money put to the credit of Ireland, he declared the Government admitted they had been beaten in a conflict with the forces of law and order, and that this was the war indemnity which had to be paid—a hit that very much delighted Mr. Chamberlain. The portion of the speech which created sensation was that in which he alluded to the use of the veto. It had been contended by Mr. Sexton that the veto would never be used unless the Irish Parliament so abused its powers as to justify the use of it. This was an honourable bargain between the British Parliament and the Irish. To such a bargain Mr. Balfour declared he and his friends would be no parties. They would not let the weapon of veto rust in case it were put into their hands, and so on—a passage which excited some enthusiasm on the Tory benches and strong anger on the Irish.

      Mr. Bryce.

      The real framers of the Bill are understood to be Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Morley, and Mr. Bryce. No man in the House of Commons has so complete a knowledge as Mr. Bryce of the various forms of government in the world, especially in countries which have the complicated system that is about to be fashioned under the new Bill. Mr. Bryce is a professor and a student, and he has the manner of his calling and his pursuits. Arguing his case without passion, slowly, calmly, in excellently chosen language, he can speak on even the most