were the two tasks, neither of them other than difficult in
themselves and both made supremely difficult by the extraordinary spirit
of faction at that time animating the minority. The internal reform had
been made necessary, as Mr. Gladstone expressed it, by systematised
obstruction, based upon the abuse of ancient and generous rules, under
which system the House of Commons "becomes more and more the slave of some
of the poorest and most insignificant among its members." Forty years
before he told the provost of Oriel, "The forms of parliament are little
more than a mature expression of the principles of justice in their
application to the proceedings of deliberative bodies, having it for their
object to secure freedom and reflection, and well fitted to attain that
object." These high ideals had been gradually lowered, for Mr. Parnell had
found out that the rules which had for their object the security of
freedom and reflection, could be still more effectually wrested to objects
the very opposite.

In Mr. Gladstone's first session (1833) 395 members (the speaker excluded)
spoke, and the total number of speeches was 5765. Fifty years later, in
the session of 1883, the total number of speeches had risen to 21,160. The
remedies proposed from time to time in this parliament by Mr. Gladstone
were various, and were the occasion of many fierce and stubborn conflicts.
But the subject is in the highest degree technical, and only intelligible
to those who, as Mr. Gladstone said, "pass their lives within the walls of
parliament"--perhaps not by any means to all even of them. His papers
contain nothing of interest or novelty upon the question either of
devolution or of the compulsory stoppage of debate. We may as well,
therefore, leave it alone, only observing that the necessity for the
closure was probably the most unpalatable of all the changes forced on Mr.
Gladstone by change in social and political circumstance. To leave the
subject alone is not to ignore its extreme importance, either in the
effect of revolution in procedure upon the character of the House, and its
power of despatching and controlling national business; or as an
indication that the old order was yielding in the political sphere as
everywhere else to the conditions of a new time.

II

The question of extending to householders in the country the franchise
that in 1867 had been conferred on householders in boroughs, had been
first pressed with eloquence