his commanding position as a debater--of his formidableness
as a political and Parliamentary enemy--made the House almost unwilling
to realize that he could be taken up and reprimanded, and birched by
anybody in the House with the completeness with which Mr. Sexton was
performing the task. Mark you, there was nothing offensive--there was
nothing even severe in the language of Mr. Sexton's attack. It was
simply cold, pitiless, courteous but killing analysis--the kind of
analysis which the hapless and fraudulent bankrupt has to endure when
his castles in the air come to be examined under the cold scrutiny of
the Official Receiver in the Bankruptcy Court.

[Sidenote: Johnston of Ballykilbeg.]

A different tone was that which Mr. Sexton assumed to Mr. Johnston of
Ballykilbeg. Mr. Johnston, known to the outer world as a fire-eater of
the most determined order, inside the House is one of the most popular
of men, and with no section of the House is he more popular than with
those Irish Nationalists for whose blood he is supposed to thirst. With
gentle and friendly wit Mr. Sexton dealt with the case of Mr. Johnston
lining the ditch, declaring amid sympathetic laughter that the one
object of any Irish Nationalist who should meet the Orangemen in such a
position would be to take him out, even if he had to carry him to do so.
This reduction of the militancy of Ulster down to the level of playful
satire did much to relieve the House from the tension which the wild
language of Ulsteria had been calculated to provoke. Finally, there came
a beautiful peroration--tender, touching, well sustained--which was
listened to with breathless attention by the House, and produced as
profound a depth of emotion on the Liberal as even on the Irish Benches.
It was a peroration which lifted the great issue to all the heights of
solemnity, nobility, and supreme interest which it reaches in the mouth
of an eloquent orator. This tremendous speech--in its variety, in its
power--in its alternation of scathing scorn, copious analysis, playful
and gentle wit--was perhaps the most remarkable example in our times of
the sway which an orator has over the House of Commons.

[Sidenote: Mr. Carson.]

Mr. Carson was unfortunate in every sense in having to follow an oration
of such extraordinary power, and in having to follow it at that dread
hour when every member of the House of Commons is thinking of his
long-postponed dinner. The audience of "the Sleuth Ho