est speakers in the House, though not at that time in the
cabinet, was making an admirably warm and convinced defence alike of the
policy and the bill while these proceedings were going on. But Mr. Fowler
was listened to by men of pre-occupied minds. All knew what (M123)
momentous business was on foot in another part of the parliamentary
precincts. Many in the ranks were confident that abstention would carry
the day. Others knew that the meeting had been summoned for no such
purpose, and they made sure that the conveners would have their way. The
quiet inside the House was intense and unnatural. As at last the news of
the determination upstairs to vote against the bill ran along the benches
before the speaker sat down, men knew that the ministerial day was lost.
It was estimated by the heads of the "Chamberlain group" that if they
abstained, the bill would pass by a majority of five. Such a bill carried
by such a majority could of course not have proceeded much further. The
principle of autonomy would have been saved, and time would have been
secured for deliberation upon a new plan. More than once Mr. Gladstone
observed that no decision taken from the beginning of the crisis to the
end was either more incomprehensible or more disastrous.

IV

The division was taken a little after one o'clock on the morning of the
8th of June. The Irish leader made one of the most masterly speeches that
ever fell from him. Whether agreeing with or differing from the policy,
every unprejudiced listener felt that this was not the mere dialectic of a
party debater, dealing smartly with abstract or verbal or artificial
arguments, but the utterance of a statesman with his eye firmly fixed upon
the actual circumstances of the nation for whose government this bill
would make him responsible. As he dealt with Ulster, with finance, with
the supremacy of parliament, with the loyal minority, with the settlement
of education in an Irish legislature,--soberly, steadily, deliberately,
with that full, familiar, deep insight into the facts of a country, which
is only possible to a man who belongs to it and has passed his life in it,
the effect of Mr. Parnell's speech was to make even able disputants on
either side look little better than amateurs.

The debate was wound up for the regular opposition by Sir Michael Hicks
Beach, who was justly regarded throughout the session as having led his
party with remarkable skill and judgment. Like the Irish