and candour, he went on to points of pleasant banter,
got his audience interested and amused and a little bewildered; carried
men with him in graceful arguments on the merits; and finally, with
bye-play of consummate sport, showed in triumph that the concession that
we consented to make was so right and natural, that it must have been
inevitable from the very first. Never were tables more effectively turned;
the opposition watched first with amazement, then with excitement and
delight as children watch a wizard; and he sat down victorious. Not
another word was said or could be said. "Never in all my parliamentary
years," said a powerful veteran on the front bench opposite, as he passed
behind the Speaker's chair, "never have I seen so wonderful a thing done
as that."

The state of the county of Clare was a godsend to the obstructive. Clare
was not at that moment quite as innocent as the garden of Eden before the
fall, but the condition was not serious; it had been twenty times worse
before without occupying the House of Commons five minutes. Now an evening
a week was not thought too much for a hollow debate on disorder in Clare.
It was described as a definite matter of urgent importance, though it had
slept for years, and though three times in succession the judge of assize
(travelling entirely out of his proper business) had denounced the state
of things. It was made to support five votes of censure in eight weeks.

On one of these votes of censure on Irish administration, moved by Mr.
Balfour (March 27), Mr. Gladstone listened to the debate. At 8 we begged
him not to stay and not to take the trouble to speak, so trumpery was the
whole affair. He said he must, if only for five minutes, to show that he
identified himself with his Irish minister. He left to dine, and then
before ten was on his feet, making what Lord Randolph Churchill rightly
called "a most impressive and entrancing speech." He talked of Pat this
and Michael that, and Father the other, as if he had pondered their cases
for a month, clenching every point with extraordinary strength as well as
consummate ease and grace, and winding up with some phrases of wonderful
simplicity and concentration.

A distinguished member made a motion for the exclusion of Irish cabinet
ministers from their chamber. Mr. Gladstone was reminded on the bench just
before he rose, that the same proposal had been inserted in the Act of
Settlement, and repealed in 1705. He wove this