above all things that the precious life precious life of the Premier should not be endangered, were not to be comforted even by this prospect. It would, they perpended, be too much for a statesman, his energies sapped by sixty years' hard labour in the public service.
Of what really happened the student of Parliamentary reports has a general idea, though the situation can be fully realized only by those present in the House day by day and through all the sitting. Whilst the Home Rule Bill was to the fore, Mr. Gladstone was, with an interval for dinner, in his place from first to last. Even the dinner hour he cut shorter than was others' wont. Often when the hands of the clock drew close to eight and the Chamber grew empty, Mr. Gladstone was found at the end of the Treasury Bench, with hand to ear listening intently to some inconsiderable member at whose uprising the audience had hastily dispersed. Mr. Morley had no chance with him, nor Sir William Harcourt either. It might have been thought that he would be content with answering Mr. Balfour or his "right hon. friend" Mr. Chamberlain, leaving to the Chief Secretary or the Solicitor-General the task of replying to members of smaller calibre. That was a reasonable expectation, disappointed, if necessary, half-a-dozen times in a sitting. No one was too inconsiderable for him to one reply to.
The only place at which he drew a line was the occasional interposition of Sir Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, though with what pang self-restraint was here observed no man knoweth. In the opinion of some of his hearers he marred the otherwise perfect symmetry of his speech on the third reading, by devoting the opening passages to the confusion of Mr. Chaplin, who had challenged his presentation of Cavour's views on Irish Home Rule.
"Tireless activity."
It seemed to impatient onlookers that this constant appearance of the Premier on the scene was conducive to prolongation of the debate. If in Committee he had taken a course that would certainly have been adopted by Mr. Disraeli—either ignored the speech of a second or third rate man, or let it be answered by the Minister conjoined with himself in charge of the Bill—the conversation would have flickered out. The interposition of the Premier, upon whatever inducement, instantly raised the the debate to the highest the highest level, and drew into the controversy leaders in other parts of the House who otherwise would have abstained from speech. On many occasions that was indubitably true. The habit is mentioned here merely in illustration of the tireless activity of the youthful octogenarian.
The success which attended a much disputed strategy of the Premier's on analogous lines, makes one chary of assuming that he was, on the whole, wrong in this particular matter. On successive stages of the Bill the obstruction with which it was met wore away such patience as is possessed by the Radical section of his supporters. Had they won their way, the duration of the struggle would have been nearer forty days than eighty-two. Since the Reform Bill of 1831 was disposed of in forty-seven days, the Corn Laws repealed in ten days, the Reform Bill of 1867 passed in thirty-four days, the Irish Church Disestablished in nineteen days, and the Irish Land Act of 1881 run through the Commons in forty-six days, that might have been held to suffice. Mr. Gladstone, patient, long suffering beyond average capacity, resisted importunity, and without once even showing signs of losing his temper, politely pegged away.
He had his reward in a triumph which, as far as I have observed, did not in the comments on the final stage of the controversy receive the notice it merited. A main plank in Mr. Chamberlain's policy, eagerly adopted by the united Opposition, was to force the hand of the Government in the matter of the Closure, and thus provide excuse for the
