through all its stages in one
Session of Parliament it should not be necessary to repeat the process
in the next, but that a mere resolution should bring the Bill once again
into the fulness of life. Would it not be possible for the Government,
asked Sir Charles, to adopt the proposal with regard to their measures?
The answer of the Old Man was cautious, vague, and dilatory. It is one
of his well-known peculiarities not to arrive at the solution of a
tactical difficulty one moment too soon; and this is a rule which,
generally speaking, acts extremely well. I dare say Sir Charles Dilke
did not expect any other answer; and nobody in the House was surprised
that the Old Man answered as he did. But all the same, one could read
between the lines, and it was pretty clear that the Old Man was
preparing to face the situation by remedies drastic enough to meet even
so revolutionary a situation.

[Sidenote: A great Parliamentarian.]

Everybody was delighted--that is to say, everybody on the Liberal side
of the House--to see that the great old leader was displaying on this
question the same unerring tactics, the same resources the same
willingness to learn, and the same elasticity of mind as he has
manifested throughout his whole life--or at least throughout all that
part of it which dates from his escape from the shackles of his early
and obscurantist creed. He has never concealed the fact that he departed
from the old rules of the House of Commons with misgiving reluctance,
and even repulsion. It would have been strange, indeed, if he could have
felt otherwise after all his long years of glorious service in that
august assembly. But then, when the time did come for taking the plunge,
he took it boldly and unshrinkingly. It was a delight to watch him
during this Session, and especially when it became necessary to use the
guillotine against the revolutionary and iniquitous attempt to paralyse
the House of Commons by sheer shameless obstruction. The "guillotine"
was a most serious, a most momentous, and even portentous departure from
all precedent, except, of course, the Tory precedent of 1887; but the
Old Man, when the proper time came, proposed the experiment with the
utmost composure--with that splendid command of nerve--that lofty and
dauntless courage--that indifference to attack, which explains his
extending hold over the imaginations and the hearts of men.

[Sidenote: The plain duty of Liberals.]

I have little doubt th