utes the cheers were given--and again
given, and again. Meantime, poor Mr. Courtney had been standing--waiting
for silence. To him had been entrusted the task of moving the rejection
of the measure. He was dull, pedantic, and rather embarrassed after this
great effort of Mr. Gladstone, and the House emptied. There was a
certain stir of curiosity as the name of "Mr. Disraeli" was called by
the Speaker; and then the bearer of one of the greatest names of our
times, stood up. His speech was brightish, cleverish, and yet there was
something wanting. Mr. Redmond was critical, cautious, severe on the
financial clauses, but finally pronounced for the Bill. And so we
started the first day of final debate on the Home Rule Bill.

[Sidenote: The last lap.]

There was no doubt about it; the House was thoroughly jaded, and it
would have been beyond the power of the most Demosthenic orator to rouse
it to anything like enthusiasm. Several of the speeches throughout the
following evening were of a high order; but still there was no
response--it was speaking from a rock to the noisy, unlistening, and
irresponsive sea. The night of September 1st began with a brief,
graceful, finely-phrased and finely-tempered speech by Mr. Justin
McCarthy, which confirmed Mr. Dillon's frank expression of the Bill as a
final measure of emancipation to the Irish people. The obvious sincerity
of the speaker--the high character he has, his long consistency, and,
above all, the sense of his thorough unselfishness, procured for Mr.
McCarthy a respectful and even a sympathetic hearing from all parts of
the House, and he had an audience silent, attentive, and admiring.

[Sidenote: Joe's parting bolt.]

The contrast between the kindliness, the sincere judgment, and the
kindly disposition of Mr. McCarthy and the somewhat raucous and
malevolent accents of Mr. Chamberlain, was very marked. Not that Mr.
Chamberlain was by any means so nasty as usual; it looked as if he had
been taught by the failure of his last utterance into learning at last
that malevolence in the end defeats itself by its very excess, and he
evidently had resolved to put a very severe restraint upon himself, and
attuned his oratory to a very minor key. But this new tone was just as
unsuccessful as the other, and there is a second unsuccessful and flat
speech to be put to his credit. Many of the ideas, many of the phrases,
were repetitions of things he had already said a hundred times over in
t