ath
of her husband ten years ago, and her loyalty to Liberalism of the
severest type was part as it were of her weeds. There was a nephew of
Sir Roderick Newton, a bright young Hebrew of the graver type, and a
couple of dissenting ministers in high collars and hats that stopped
halfway between the bowler of this world and the shovel-hat of heaven.
There was also a young solicitor from Lurky done in the horsey style,
and there was a very little nervous man with a high brow and a face
contracting below as though the jawbones and teeth had been taken out
and the features compressed. The rest of the deputation, which included
two other public-spirited ladies and several ministers of religion,
might have been raked out of any omnibus going Strandward during the
May meetings. They thrust Parvill forward as spokesman, and manifested
a strong disposition to say "Hear, hear!" to his more strenuous protests
provided my eye wasn't upon them at the time.

I regarded this appalling deputation as Parvill's apologetic but quite
definite utterances drew to an end. I had a moment of vision. Behind
them I saw the wonderful array of skeleton forces that stand for public
opinion, that are as much public opinion as exists indeed at the present
time. The whole process of politics which bulks so solidly in history
seemed for that clairvoyant instant but a froth of petty motives above
abysms of indifference....

Some one had finished. I perceived I had to speak.

"Very well," I said, "I won't keep you long in replying. I'll resign if
there isn't a dissolution before next February, and if there is I shan't
stand again. You don't want the bother and expense of a bye-election
(approving murmurs) if it can be avoided. But I may tell you plainly now
that I don't think it will be necessary for me to resign, and the sooner
you find my successor the better for the party. The Lords are in a
corner; they've got to fight now or never, and I think they will throw
out the Budget. Then they will go on fighting. It is a fight that will
last for years. They have a sort of social discipline, and you haven't.
You Liberals will find yourselves with a country behind you, vaguely
indignant perhaps, but totally unprepared with any ideas whatever in
the matter, face to face with the problem of bringing the British
constitution up-to-date. Anything may happen, provided only that it is
sufficiently absurd. If the King backs the Lords--and I don't see why he
shouldn