ged to get
out what he had to say. He brought Mr. Chamberlain face to face with
this spectre of his dead past.

[Sidenote: Mr. Balfour does not score.]

Meantime, Mr. Balfour made a great mistake. He had listened to the
speech of Mr. Chamberlain, and had been one of those who had joined in
the cheers at the exposure of Mr. Dillon's accidental mistake. There he
should have left it, but, carried away by the hope of driving the point
home against a political enemy, he needs must add something to what Mr.
Chamberlain had said. Now Mr. Balfour is in many points very superior to
Joe. He should leave personal vituperation to him: he is more active,
defter, and more willing to do such dirty work. Moreover, it is in the
recollection of the members that, in the Coercionist struggle, Mr.
Balfour seemed to have towards Mr. Dillon an unusual amount of personal
animosity. Speaking with want of grace and personal courtesy, which are
things, I am bound to say, uncommon with him, he accused Mr. Dillon of
deliberate and conscious hypocrisy. This also was a tactical blunder,
and will largely account for the transformation following, to which I am
going to refer.

[Sidenote: The transformation.]

The House on the following day, July 4th, was very still when Mr. Dillon
rose--evidently to refer to the incident of the previous night. His
address was quiet, brief, and graceful. With charming modesty, he
acknowledged the mistake he had made, and explained how, in running over
in memory the hundreds of speeches he had delivered, he had confounded
one speech with another. He was unable to understand how his memory,
which never before had played him false, had done him this ill turn, and
he appealed to the House generally, and declared that there was not even
amongst his bitter political foes one who would think him capable of
trying to palm off on the House a speech which could be so palpably and
so readily exposed. In these few sentences, Mr. Dillon brought before
the House his strange, picturesque, and chequered career. His oratory
was such that the explanation was considered the best ever given in the
House of Commons.

[Sidenote: Joe is absent.]

This was a recovery of some ground lost on the previous night. But there
was even better to come. Mr. Harrington's accuracy and veracity as to
Mr. Chamberlain's dealings with the Irish members had been challenged,
as I have said, by Mr. Chamberlain, and he now rose to read the historic
letter