fortably to an
audience which consisted of himself, Mr. Biggar, the Minister in
attendance, and the Speaker of the House--in all, four, including
himself. Indeed, he often said to me that he rather liked to have such
an audience. Speaking was not easy or agreeable to him, and his sole
purpose for many years in speaking at all was to consume so much time.
Parnell was a man who always found it rather hard to concentrate his
mind on any subject unless he was alone and in silence. This was perhaps
one of the many reasons why he kept out of the House of Commons as much
as he could. Anything like noise or disturbance around him seemed to
destroy his power of thinking. For instance, when he was being
cross-examined by Sir Richard Webster in the course of the Forgeries
Commission, his friends trembled one day because, looking at his face,
with its puzzled, far-away look, they knew that he was in one of those
moods of abstraction, during which he was scarcely accountable for what
he said. And sure enough he made on that day the appalling statement
that he had used certain language for the purpose of deceiving the House
of Commons. He said to me that he liked to speak in an empty House
because then he had time to collect his thoughts. Joe Biggar, his
associate, was also able to speak in any circumstances with exactly the
same ease of spirit. To him, speaking was but a means to an end, and
whether people listened to him or not--stopped to hang on his words or
fled before his grating voice and Ulster accent--it was all one to him.
Two other men have the power of speaking always with the same interest
and self-possession. These are Sir Charles Dilke and Mr. O'Connor Power.

[Sidenote: The Sensitiveness of Mr. Balfour.]

But Mr. Balfour is like none of these men. He requires the glow of a
good audience--of a cheering party--of the certainty of success in the
division lobby--to bring out his best powers. The splendid, rattling,
self-confident debater of the coercion period now no longer exists, and
Mr. Balfour has positively gone back to the clumsiness, stammering, and
ineffectiveness of the pre-historic period of his life before he had
taken up the Chief Secretaryship. That was bad enough; but what is worse
is that the House is beginning to feel it. If you lose confidence in
yourself, the world is certain to pretty soon follow your example. And
so it is now with Mr. Balfour, for when he stood up to speak on March
27th there was the