e conflict between the story of
Falstaff and the contemptuously quiet rejoinder of Prince Hal. Lord
Randolph was taken in hand; he was soon disposed of. Then Mr. Dunbar
Barton was crumpled up and flung away. Sir Edward Clarke ventured an
interruption; he was crushed in a sentence. It was an admirable specimen
of destructive criticism, and it hugely and palpably delighted Mr.
Gladstone.

[Sidenote: Mr. Asquith.]

Mr. Asquith had intended to speak on April 14th, evening, but the
portentous and prolix Courtney had shut him out, and he had to wait till
the following evening. The change was, perhaps, desirable, for Mr.
Asquith had thus the opportunity of addressing the House when it was
fresh, vital, and impressionable. In these long debates the evenings
usually became intolerably dull and oppressive. Though Mr. Asquith was
an untried man when he went into office, in two speeches he succeeded in
placing himself in the very front rank of the debaters and politicians
in the House. Let me say at once that the speech was a remarkable
triumph, and placed Mr. Asquith at a bound amid not only the orators,
but the statesmen of the House of Commons--the men who have nerve,
breadth of view, great courage, enormous resource.

[Sidenote: Joe's dustheap.]

One of the discoveries of the speech must have been particularly
unpleasant to Mr. Chamberlain. The gentleman from Birmingham has at last
found a man who does not fear him--who has a much finer mind--wider
culture--who has judgment, temper, and a vocabulary as copious and as
ready as that of Mr. Chamberlain himself. One had only to look at Mr.
Chamberlain throughout the speech to see how palpable, how painful this
discovery was--especially to a man to whom politics is nothing but a
mere conflict between contending rivalries and malignities. Mr.
Asquith--calm, self-possessed, measured--put Joe on the rack with a
deliberation that was sometimes almost cruel in its effectiveness and
relentlessness; and Joe was foolish enough to point the severity and
success of the attack by losing his self-control. When Mr. Asquith said
that Joe could find no better employment than that of "scavenging"--here
was a word to make Joe wince--"among the dustheaps" of past speeches,
Joe was a sight to see. A "scavenger"--this was the disrespectful way in
which those quotations were described which had often roused the Tory
Benches to ecstasies of delight. Joe was so angered that he could not
get over it f